Treachery at Lancaster Gate (9 page)

Her tact reasserted itself. She smiled ruefully. “Then you have to consider that the bombing really was directed at the police. Tellman is going to be very unhappy, but you can't defend someone effectively if you refuse to acknowledge where they are vulnerable.”

“You've been thinking about it, haven't you?” he observed, sitting up a little straighter. “What did Gracie say?”

“Only that he doesn't like what he's finding.”

Pitt wondered if that were the full truth, or if she was protecting a confidence. He could easily guess what it was. He had worked with Tellman long enough to know his belief in the law, and the police as the front line against those who broke it. Corruption in the police was a dark thought in the warmth of this room where he had known so much happiness, but it would not be dismissed.

“Thomas?” Charlotte prompted.

He turned his attention back to her. “It's possible. I hope it's just one man who feels a personal grudge for some wrong, real or imagined.”

“Bombing police, injuring three and killing two?” she said with doubt. “It must have been a very great wrong.”

“It could become three,” he corrected. “Ednam isn't doing well. They don't think he'll live.”

“I'm sorry.”

“But you're right: it is a very violent way to protest. It could easily have killed all five.”

“Is it part of something larger?” she asked. “If you discover whatever the corruption is, the newspapers will make a big issue of it. Politicians will argue about it, lay blame wherever they want to.” She leaned forward. “Could that be the purpose of it, do you think? Could it be real Special Branch business? I mean a foreign power trying to weaken us, distract us from some other attack? Make us look at this so hard that we miss something else? Thomas, I think you'll need to be very careful how you handle this.”

She was right, and he had no argument against it.

“I wish I knew what the truth was!” he said. “And, please God, it is one I can expose, not something that has to be covered up because it would betray government secrets we can't afford to reveal.”

She caught something in his voice. “Thomas…”

“The man leading the negotiation of this contract with the Chinese—Alexander Duncannon is his son. He had a bad fall from a horse and injured his back.” He answered the unasked questions. “He took opium for the pain. Still does. Like many young men, he has a desire for social change, and some of it centers on the police. I hope he keeps his opium on a low key, at least until this contract is signed. Jack asked me not to involve Alexander in an investigation, at least until then.”

“And did you agree?”

“I can't. But I think I have to look a great deal more closely at the five men who were at Lancaster Gate. I would much rather not, but I can't protect what I don't know.”

“Will you make it public?”

“I don't know if I'll find anything. If it's just error, no, I won't. We need to believe in our police. And most of them are good, brave, honest men doing a difficult job, quite often in danger, and for little enough money. We owe them our loyalty. It's the very least we can give, if we continue to expect them to help us when we're in trouble, keep order so we can sleep at peace in our beds and go safely about our business the next day. We all depend on it. Respect for the law, and those who guard it, is the bedrock of a civilized society.”

Charlotte leaned forward in her chair and put her warm hand over his where it rested on his knee.

“I know that, and I've been proud of what you do since the day I married you…”

“Not before?” he said wryly, in part to conceal a wave of emotion he would have governed rather better had she not been so kind. He remembered the arguments they had had before that, when she was still a young woman of the gentry who resented police, thought them interfering, and socially about as welcome as the bailiff or the rat catcher.

“Before I was married to you, my dear, I had no right to share credit in anything you did,” she responded.

“Or to meddle,” he added. “But it didn't stop you.”

She gave a little shrug. “I know. And I'm going to meddle now. Maybe you can think of everything, but just in case you don't, have you wondered if it is a new, different group of people who want the police to be disgraced publicly? If I were to plan a revolution of any sort that required getting rid of the order that exists, I would start by destroying people's belief in the law. If the police don't protect you, then you have to protect yourself. You must enact your own justice, and for that you need weapons, cooperation, a new force to replace the old one that you have shown does not work.”

“Charlotte…” he protested, but the argument died before he could find words for it. What she was suggesting was extreme, but the breaking of trust in government was the beginning of anarchy. And it would not be the first time.

“Frighten people, make them angry,” she went on, “and they can be persuaded to do all kinds of things. If I were in danger and the police would not protect me, wouldn't you do so yourself?”

“You don't need to labor the point. I understand,” he said a little sharply. It was the thought he had been trying to reason away. “But all we have so far is one appalling act of violence. It is quite specific. Panic is the last thing we want…”

“I want you to be right,” she insisted. “Always right! I want you to have thought of everything. You have to. It takes only one lunatic with a vision and enough brains to put it into action, and we have twice the battle to fight than if we had seen it coming and acted in time.”

He knew that she meant it. She was fiercely protective in that reckless, wholehearted way only women can be. He put his hand over hers and closed it gently.

“I shall consider that very dangerous possibility,” he promised. “It is one of the many things we need to watch for. As you say, if you want to ruin a nation, begin by ruining their trust in the law. Then each man will take it into his own hands, and you have anarchy. Now I'm going to bed.” He rose to his feet and pulled her up gently also. “And so are you,” he added.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
P
ITT
mentioned to Stoker the possibility of a diversion created by a foreign group of some sort, but with English help.

“If they exist, they're damn clever,” Stoker said unhappily, staring at the latest reports on Pitt's desk.

“Could it be someone we would be very unlikely to suspect?” Pitt suggested. “That's how we missed him?”

“Like who?” Stoker asked. “A member of Parliament? Or someone in the law, the judiciary?”

“Yes. Or one of us?” Pitt answered more quietly, as if even in here they could be overheard.

Stoker's bony face went pale. “Yes, I suppose it could. That would mean we couldn't trust our own reports. And if it's one of them, then until we know who, it's all of them. I've known these men for years, sir. I don't believe that.”

“I know,” Pitt agreed. “And Tellman doesn't believe it of the police. I can't blame him. Perhaps the real damage would be suspicion itself?”

Stoker shivered. “Once we start turning on each other, that's really the beginning of the end.”

“We're not going to entertain that one,” Pitt said bluntly. “But I was thinking, on the way in this morning, if someone really intended to create chaos, and then take over, he would have to have a force of some size behind him. You can't do that with half a dozen here and there.”

“The police?” Stoker's eyebrows rose. “No. The odd one might be rotten, but they're good men and they'd never take to anything like that. They're part of the people. You're wrong. Hell! You used to be one of them.” He was angry now.

“I wasn't suspecting the police,” Pitt corrected him. “Anyway, the police generally have no weapons except truncheons. I've been thinking a bit more along the lines of a disaffected group from the army. Ednam used to be army, fifteen years ago.” He saw Stoker's face tighten. “Thinking back on one or two incidents we got reports of—how about that bit of unpleasantness with General Breward? He's junior, as generals go, only about forty-five, but pigheaded, much admired by his more bloody-minded juniors. Got a few inflated ideas of his own importance.”

Stoker had been a merchant seaman before joining Special Branch. He was used to authority, but he despised a leader who put his own men in jeopardy unnecessarily. Like most sailors, he had intense respect for the sea. He had the same respect for the terrain over which a battle might be fought, and for the men who fought it beside him.

“I'll look into it, sir. He's certainly arrogant enough—and stupid, in his own way. Plenty of cleverness, and damn all wisdom.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said. “I'm going to go back over the victims again. See what they might have done together. Just in case…”

“Yes, sir.”

“G
OOD MEN, ALL OF
them,” Chief Superintendent Cotton said an hour later as Pitt sat in his office. He was superior to Whicker, whose responsibility was only at local level.

Cotton tipped his chair back a little and stared at Pitt. He was about Pitt's own age, and sunken-cheeked with black, hooded eyes. “Why the devil are you asking?”

“To clear their names,” Pitt said with slight surprise, as if the answer should have been obvious. “You've no doubt heard what the newspapers are suggesting, even if you haven't read them.”

Cotton's smile did not reach the steady eyes, which were unreadable because they were so shadowed by his brows. “You think they were targeted deliberately?”

“It's possible. I have to explore it. Disprove it, if I can.”

“Why? Because you were once in the police yourself?”

“Because I want to find the man who did this,” Pitt told him. “And for that I need to know why. It's not any of the anarchists and general troublemakers we know.”

“Sure of that, are you?”

“Yes.”

Cotton let out his breath. “Bad business.” For the first time he regarded Pitt with some respect. “Those five men had worked together on and off for several years. No better or worse than most. Ednam, poor devil, was a bit self-important, bossy, wouldn't be told what to do if he thought different. Army background, I suppose. But he wasn't often wrong. His men looked up to him. He was loyal to them, good or bad. It was appreciated.”

“Good or bad?”

“He turned a blind eye to a few mistakes, or even a few things done on purpose.”

“What sort of things?” Pitt pressed.

“For God's sake, man!” Cotton said violently, slamming his chair back on all four feet. “The usual sort of things! A bit too much to drink…the odd brawl…laying into a suspect to persuade him to stop lying…one or two arrests a bit rougher than necessary. Find me the policeman that hasn't crossed the line some time or other, and I'll show you a boss that doesn't know his men.”

“Were they disciplined?” Pitt tried to keep his tone neutral, but with difficulty.

Cotton raised his black brows. “I have no idea. I didn't ask, and neither will you, if you've any sense.”

“What about losing evidence? Accepting the odd gift from someone to turn the other way?” Pitt could not let it go yet.

Cotton stared at him.

“Or helping themselves to a little evidence, like a bottle of whisky or a box of cigars?” Pitt went on. “Petty theft a member of the public wouldn't know? Or care about? Being beaten into giving false testimony or disabled during a violent arrest is a different matter. And being framed for a crime they didn't commit is another matter altogether. Is
that
what we're talking about?”

“No!” Cotton said angrily. “Not in my command, and not that I know about. Do you?”

Pitt was startled. “No I don't!”

“Swear for all your men, would you? Tellman, for example?” Cotton said, meeting Pitt's eyes with a totally unreadable expression.

“I would swear for his honesty, yes,” Pitt said without hesitation. “Or any of my men in Special Branch.”

“For his honesty? Interesting,” Cotton observed. “Then what would you not swear for?”

Pitt had to think for a moment. Cotton would remember every word he said, and trip him on them if he could. He would repeat them where he thought it served his purpose. If Pitt denied any possible fault it would mark him as absurd, incompetent, or a deliberate liar.

“He's an idealist,” he chose his words. “And loyal. He might see what he hoped to see, and be blind to something uglier. I don't know if he would necessarily report a man's error, if he believed it to be genuine. Trust goes both ways. If you take advantage of a man's error, he'll take advantage of yours, and we can none of us afford that.”

“Naïve? Is that what you'd call him?” Cotton smiled, showing his teeth. “A loyalty that inclines him to look the other way? An idealist who doesn't see his men's weaknesses? Dangerous, don't you think? Do you operate like that, Pitt? Special Branch Commander Pitt? Is that who has our country's safety in his hands? A man who puts protecting his men from their faults before catching the bombers who would sink our country under a tide of violence and chaos?”

Cotton had taken a step too far, and he knew it the instant he saw the change in Pitt's face.

“My junior officers make mistakes,” Pitt answered. “If they don't learn not to, they stay junior. What about yours? You say Ednam was a loyal bully. What about Yarcombe, Bossiney? The others?”

“I don't tell tales on dead men.” Cotton shuffled his chair forward again and looked at Pitt directly across the desk. He was not used to being questioned, even though Pitt outranked him.