Anne Perry - Treachery at Lancaster Gate

He turned and moved away, dizzy for a moment. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and pressed on.

The second body was half-obscured by fallen plaster and wood, but it was far less obviously damaged. There was little smoke or dust on Hobbs’s face and his pattern of freckles was easily recognizable. Pitt studied him as dispassionately as he could, trying to learn something from the way the debris lay around him. The police surgeon would be able to tell him more, but it appeared that Hobbs had been caught by surprise, and much further from the site of the explosion than Newman.

Pitt was still staring at the surroundings when he heard footsteps somewhere behind him. He turned and saw the familiar figure of Samuel Tellman picking his way through the plaster, water, and charred wood. Tellman had been Pitt’s sergeant when they were both at Bow Street. It had taken them a long time to be comfortable with each other. Tellman had distrusted anyone with a background as humble as Pitt’s but who spoke like a gentleman. To him it seemed that Pitt’s accent was affected, as if Pitt thought himself superior. Pitt felt no reason to explain that his speech was the product of having been educated along with Sir Arthur Desmond’s son at the country estate where his father had been gamekeeper. When his father had been transported to Australia for a crime he had not committed, Pitt’s mother had remained as laundress, and Sir Arthur had seen the young Pitt as a companion to his son and a spur to excel him in class. The whole story was a wound that still ached on his father’s behalf, and it wasn’t something he wished to discuss with Tellman. But years of working together had taught them a mutual respect, and loyalty.

“Good afternoon, sir.” Tellman stopped beside him.

“Good afternoon, Inspector,” Pitt replied.

Tellman stared down at the body. “I’m your liaison with the police, sir.”

Pitt had expected someone to provide liaison, partly because he was Special Branch and not in the regular police, but mostly because the victims were the police’s own men. The internal loyalty of the police force was not unlike that of soldiers in an army at war. An officer facing danger had to have an absolute trust in those who stood beside him, or at his back.

Pitt nodded. It would be good to work with Tellman again-but he wished it were on anything other than this.

“Looks like they were right here when it went off,” Pitt observed. “Newman must have been closest to it.”

“Yes. I saw. What kind of a bloody lunatic would do this?” Tellman’s voice was tight, as if he were controlling it with difficulty. “I want freedom for all men, and food, and houses, and the right to come and go as I please. But what the hell good does something like this do? Which anarchists did this, anyway? Spanish? Italian? French? Russian? Why in God’s name do all the bloody lunatics in Europe come and live in London?” He turned to face Pitt. “Why do we let them?” His face was white, two spots of color in his lean cheeks, anger in his eyes. “Don’t you know who they are? Isn’t that what Special Branch is supposed to be for, to prevent exactly this from happening?”

Pitt hunched his shoulders and drove his hands deeper into his pockets. “I don’t make the policy, Tellman. And yes, I know who a lot of them are. Mostly they just talk.”

The disgust and the pain in Tellman’s face were more powerful than words. “I’ll find them and hang them-whatever you want to do about it.” It was a challenge.

Pitt did not bother to answer. He understood the emotion behind the words. Right at this moment he felt much the same. He might feel differently when he learned who was responsible. Some of the men branded as anarchists had done no more than protest for decent pay, enough to feed their families. A few of them had been imprisoned, tortured, and even executed, simply for protesting against injustice. Driven far enough, he might have done the same.

“Why were these men here?” he asked Tellman. “Five of them, at this quiet house right on the park? It can’t have been an inquiry. You don’t need five men for that. There’s no one else dead or hurt, so the house must have been empty. What were they doing?”

Tellman’s expression tightened. “I don’t know yet, but I mean to find out. But if the investigation was to do with anarchists, they would have told Special Branch what was going on. So it must be something else.”

Pitt did not take that totally for granted as Tellman seemed to, but it was not the time to argue. “Anything known about this address?” he asked instead.

“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.”