Long Spoon Lane (26 page)

P
ITT TURNED ON
his heel, Yancy forgotten, and ran to the end of the street, round the corner, and towards the flame filling the sky. Behind the jagged outlines of the roofs, ripped open and spewing fire, the belching smoke already caught in his lungs as he came closer. People were crying out, weeping. Some were standing motionless as if too stunned or confused to know what to do. Others were running one way then the other, some just stumbled about aimlessly. Rubble was still falling, with charred and burning pieces of wood, and flying glass, the shards bright like daggers.

As Pitt came to the end of Scarborough Street, the smoke caught in his throat and he felt the heat on his face. There were injured people lying in the roadway, some motionless, crumpled over like heaps of rags, their limbs twisted. Someone was screaming. There was blood, smoking wood, bricks, and shards of glass everywhere. A dog barked incessantly. Above it all was the sound of flames soaring up inside what was left of the last three houses. In the heat, wood exploded, and slates flew off like hurled knives, edges sharp as blades, dust and rubble poured into the air.

Pitt stood still, trying to quell the horror inside himself and to keep control. Had anyone sent for the fire brigade? Burning wood was already falling onto the roofs on the next street. What about doctors? Anyone to help? He moved forward, trying to find any sort of order in the terror and chaos. He could see clearly now in the glare of the fire.

“Has anyone called for the fire engines?” he shouted as another wall caved in. “Get the people out!” He took an old woman by the arm. “Go to the end of the street!” he told her firmly. “Away from the heat. Things will fall on you if you stand here.”

“My ’usband,” she said, blank-eyed. “ ’E’s in bed. ’E were drunk out of ’is skin. I gotta get ’im. ’E’ll be burned.”

“You can’t help him now.” He did not release her. A young man was standing a few yards away, barefooted, shaking uncontrollably. “Here!” Pitt called to him. He turned slowly. “Take her out of the way,” Pitt told him. “Move everyone. Help me!”

The young man blinked. Slowly awareness returned to his eyes and he obeyed. Other people were beginning to react, trying to help the injured, picking up children and carrying them away from the heat.

Pitt went to the nearest body lying on the stones and bent to look more closely. It was a young woman, half on her back, her legs doubled under her. A single glance at her face told him that she was beyond help. There was blood in her hair and her wide eyes had already misted over. He knelt beside her feeling sick and twisted inside with rage. They should have been able to stop this. This was not any kind of idealism or desire to reform; it was madness, inhumanity driven by stupidity and hate.

Someone was moaning a few yards away. There was no time to spend in emotion now. It helped no one. He clambered to his feet and went over to the person moaning. It was getting hotter. He found himself blinking and turning his head from the flying ash. More slates were sliding off the roof and falling onto the road or the pavement. He reached the person: an older woman with a badly broken leg and a blood-pouring gash in her arm. She must have been in a lot of pain, but it was the bleeding that was frightening her.

“You’ll be all right,” he said with conviction. He tore a piece off her petticoat and tied up her arm. He was afraid it might be too tight, but he had to stop the blood gushing through. Surely someone would have gone for a doctor?

“There.” He stood up, then bent and lifted her onto the good leg. She was heavy and awkward, and it took all his strength. He nearly lost his balance. “Lean on me, and I’ll get you as far as the main road,” he said.

She thanked him, and as he turned towards the street again he saw Victor Narraway outlined against the flames. He was lean, all tense angles, his hair wildly on end, his face smeared with soot and lit red in the reflection.

Pitt’s first reaction was disbelief. “How did you get here?” he had to shout above the noise. “So soon? Did you know about it?”

“Of course I didn’t, you fool!” Narraway snapped, coming closer to him. “I was following you!”

“You were?” Pitt could scarcely grasp it. “Why? Didn’t you think I’d do it?”

Another house collapsed inward, sending fire belching upwards like the roar of a volcano. The blast knocked both Pitt and Narraway backwards, the heat searing their hair and faces. Pitt stumbled, tripping over timber and the dead body of a man. Only Narraway catching his arm and almost twisting it out of its socket prevented him from falling. He righted himself with difficulty.

The first fire engine arrived, its horses panting and rolling their eyes, the driver steadying them with difficulty. Another followed immediately behind, but a glance was enough to show them it was useless trying to control any of the fires here. Only in the surrounding streets was there any chance of trying to keep it from spreading.

A young man with a bag in his hand was picking his way through the rubble, and every now and then he bent down.

Narraway shouted something, but Pitt could not hear the words. He shook his head and started towards where the man, presumably a doctor, was assisting someone onto his feet, but the weight was too much for him.

Pitt worked for as long as there was anything more he could do. He was aware of Narraway coming and going. Several times they searched the rubble together, for more people still alive, tearing off timber and broken bricks and glass. Narraway was stronger than Pitt would have expected, looking at his lean body, but he knew how to balance himself, and his will drove him on.

Finally the flames died down and the noise of the crashing and falling abated. There were more people helping. There seemed to be vans and wagons taking the injured away, and perhaps the dead as well. Many times Pitt saw the red light glare on polished buttons or the familiar tall shape of a police helmet. It was not until he stood still at the outside edge of the wreckage that he realized with dismay that it was not as comforting a sight as it had been only a few weeks before.

He stood beside a cart with rubble piled high, and Narraway was a couple of yards to the other side. Wordlessly he held out a tin mug with water in it. Pitt tried to speak but the sounds were strangled. He took the cup and drank. “Thank you,” he said at last. It was completely dark now, and all he could see was the red glow of the fires that were still burning in two of the houses. The fire brigade had soaked the roofs farther over, and it had not spread.

Narraway took the cup back and raised it to his lips. Pitt was startled to see that his hand was trembling. His skin was smeared with blood and ash, and for the first time that Pitt had seen, there was fear in his eyes.

It was not physical fear. Narraway was not foolhardy, but he had gone towards the flames without hesitation, even close enough to the crumbling and exploding walls, in order to pull people out. Pitt didn’t need to be told that it was the escalation of violence that frightened him, and the reaction there would be to this destruction. Almost the whole street was damaged beyond any further use. It would all have to be demolished and the ground cleared, and then new houses built.

Far worse than that, there were at least five people dead, and another twenty or more injured, some badly. They might yet die. This time there had been no warning, and there had obviously been at least three times as much dynamite as in Myrdle Street. They had no idea who had done it.

Pitt looked at Narraway, exhausted and filthy. No doubt his body ached just as much, his skin stung, his head felt pummeled and his lungs were tight and sore every time he took a breath. Most of all he would feel a sick overwhelming knowledge of failure. People would expect him to have prevented this. They hadn’t even captured anyone to show for it. They had not a clue or a thread to follow. Nowhere to start, nothing to say it would not happen again, and again, as often as the anarchists had a mind to do it.

Narraway looked back at him. Both of them wanted to say something, but the truth did not need words, and lies of comfort were pointless and stupid, a shattering of what little there was left.

Narraway drank some more water and handed the mug back to Pitt, who finished the last of it.

“Go home,” Narraway said, clearing his throat. “There’s nothing anyone can do here tonight.”

Pitt could think of nothing to do even tomorrow, but he ached to be back in Keppel Street and the safety of it. He was suddenly overwhelmingly sorry for Narraway that he had no such place to go, no one who loved him with unquestioning certainty. He did not want Narraway to know that he had seen it. “Thank you,” he accepted quietly. “Good night.”

He had not realized it was so late. It was nearly midnight when he opened the front door. By the time he had closed it, Charlotte, still dressed, was in the passage, the light in the parlor behind her.

“I’m all right!” he said too loudly, seeing the horror in her face. “It’s only dirt! It’ll all wash off.”

“Thomas! What…” she gasped, her eyes wide, her cheeks almost bloodless. “What happened?”

“Another explosion,” he answered. He wanted to take her in his arms now, immediately, but he was filthy. He would not only stain her clothes but pass on the stench of the fire.

She gave the matter no such thought. She flung her arms around him and held him fiercely, and kissed him. Then she buried her head in his shoulder and clung to him as if he might escape her were she to let go her grip.

He found himself smiling, touching her more gently because he was safe, and she was in his arms. Her hair had fallen out of its pins. He pulled out the remaining few and dropped them on the floor. Her hair fell down over her shoulders and he ran his fingers through it, feeling the softness of it. It was cool, like loose silk, so slippery and smooth it could almost have been liquid. And it smelled sweet, as if all the burning and the rubble and the blood had been in his imagination.

He was sorry for Narraway, and, if he had thought about it, he would even have been sorry for Voisey.

In the morning he awoke with a jolt, the silence of his bedroom beating in his ears. Memory returned with its violence and pain. Charlotte was already up. Daylight shone bright behind the curtains, and a gold strip crossed the floor where they were not quite closed. He could hear horses’ hooves and wheels in the street.

He got up quickly. Charlotte had laid out clean clothes for him on the chair. The old clothes from last night were in the scullery, keeping the smell out of the bedroom.

He shaved and dressed, and was downstairs within a quarter of an hour. His muscles ached from his exertions the previous night and he had more bruises and scratches than he could count, but he felt rested. He had slept without the nightmares he had expected, and he was hungry.

The kitchen clock said nine, and there were no newspapers on the table. Charlotte turned from the sink where she was drying dishes, and smiled at him.

Gracie came in from the pantry with a bowl of eggs and bade him good morning. He allowed them to look after him before he asked what the news was.

“Bad,” Charlotte said at last, when he was finishing his third slice of toast and marmalade and refilling his tea. She went to the pantry and returned carrying three newspapers. She put them on the table in front of him, and took the plates.

When he saw the headlines, he was glad she had hidden them until he had eaten. Denoon’s paper was the worst. He did not criticize the police; he conceded that they had an impossible task. Even with more men, better arms, and the freedom to arrest people on serious suspicion, they could not be expected to prevent atrocities like this. It required the right to gain information before such things reached the stage of violence. They must know who planned such mass murder and destruction, who held beliefs that prompted such war against the ordinary people of London and, for all anyone would say, of the whole land.

The editorial was passionate, simple, and rang with an outrage that would find an echo in half the households in England. The police, Special Branch, the government itself were helpless to tell anyone where or when it would happen again, which row of houses would be the next to shatter into a burning ruin. This was far worse than Myrdle Street.

No one had been killed there. The warning had given people time to evacuate. No such humanity had been exercised this time. What would be next? More, worse: greater numbers dead, fires that could not be put out? The fire brigades could not control anything much larger. There were not enough men. There were not the resources, even the water, to hand. Whole areas of London could burn. What was there to stop it?

The possibility of such terrible devastation required extreme measures to prevent it. The government must have the power to protect those who had elected it, and the people had the right to expect that. If the laws were needed, then they must be passed, before it was too late. Honor, patriotism, human decency required it. Survival depended upon it.

Pitt had expected to read something of the sort, yet seeing it in print now gave it a reality that he realized he had been refusing to face. Denoon had not specified in detail the provision to question household servants without the master or mistress’s knowledge. Even if he had, it is likely that most people would have seen nothing sinister in it. Those with nothing to hide would have nothing to fear. The use of such a power was easy enough to justify. It was the measure of it that was the blackmailer’s charter. It was the ability to question people without having to prove to any authority that there was just cause, and the fact that the man or woman whose actions were being spoken of, whose intimate lives, whose personal habits and belongings, whose correspondence, whose friendships were being discussed, would have no chance to deny or explain or disprove anything that might be said. A servant could be mistaken, have overheard half a conversation, have remembered facts inaccurately or merely be repeating gossip. Worse than that, they could be spiteful, dishonest, ambitious, or simply gullible and easily led. It placed in their hands the power to blackmail any master or mistress with the threat of a betrayal against which they had no defense.