Betrayal at Lisson Grove (2 page)

Pitt agreed with a nod, and they closed the distance between them and Wrexham, who was still moving with no apparent concern. Never once did he turn or look back.

Pitt found it chilling that a man could slit another’s throat and see him bleed to death, and a few moments after be walking in a crowd with outward unconcern, as if he were just one more pedestrian about some trivial daily business. What passion or inhumanity drove him? In the way he moved, the fluidity – almost grace – of his stride, Pitt could not detect even fear, let alone the conscience of a brutal murder, the blood from which must be on his clothes.

Wrexham wove in and out of the thinning crowd. Twice they lost sight of him.

‘That way!’ Gower gasped, waving his right hand. ‘I’ll go left.’ He swerved round a window-cleaner with a bucket of water, almost knocking the man over.

Pitt went the other way, into the north of an alley. The sudden shadows momentarily made him blink, half blind. He saw movement at the end and charged forward, but it was only a beggar shuffling out of a doorway. He swore under his breath, and sprinted back to the street just in time to see Gower swivelling around frantically, searching for him.

‘That way!’ Gower called urgently, and set off, leaving Pitt to catch up.

Now it was Pitt who saw him first, and Gower who had to catch up. Wrexham had crossed the road just in front of a brewer’s dray, and was out of sight by the time Pitt and Gower were able to follow. It took them over ten minutes to close on him without drawing attention. There were fewer people about, and two men running would have been highly noticeable. With fifty yards’ distance between them, Wrexham could have outrun them too easily.

They were in Commercial Road East, now, in Stepney. If Wrexham did not turn they would be in Limehouse, perhaps the West India Dock Road. If they went that far they could lose him amongst the tangle of wharfs with cranes, bales of goods, warehouses and dock labourers. If he went down to one of the ferries he could be out of sight between the ships at anchor before they could find another ferry to follow him.

Ahead of them, as if he had seen them, Wrexham increased his pace, his long legs striding out, his scarf flying.

Pitt felt a flicker of nervousness. His muscles were aching, his feet sore in spite of his excellent boots – his one concession to sartorial taste. Even well-cut jackets never looked right on him because he weighted the pockets with too many pieces of rubbish he thought he might need. His ties never managed to stay straight; perhaps he knotted them too tightly, or too loosely. But his boots were beautiful and immaculately cared for. Even though most of his work was of the mind, outthinking, outguessing, remembering and seeing significance where others didn’t, he still knew the importance of a policeman’s feet. Some habits do not die. Before he had been forced out of the Metropolitan Police, and Victor Narraway had taken him into Special Branch, he had walked enough miles to know the price of inattention to physical stamina, and boots.

Suddenly Wrexham ran across the narrow road and disappeared down Gun Lane.

‘He’s going for the Limehouse station!’ Gower shouted, leaping out of the way of a cart full of timber as he dashed after him.

Pitt was on his heels. The Limehouse station was on the Blackwall Railway, less than a hundred yards away. Wrexham could go in at least three possible directions from there and end up anywhere in the city.

But Wrexham kept moving, rapidly. His feet clattered on the stones, past the way back up to the station. Instead he went on down Gun Lane, turned left on Three Colt Street, then swerved right on Ropemakers’ Fields, still loping in an easy run.

Pitt was too breathless to shout, and anyway, Wrexham was no more than fifteen yards ahead. The few men and one old washerwoman on the path scattered as the three running men passed them. Wrexham was going to the river, as Pitt had feared.

At the end of Ropemakers’ Fields they turned right again into Narrow Street, still running. They were only yards from the river’s edge. The breeze was stiff off the water, smelling of salt and mud where the tide was low. Half a dozen gulls soared lazily in circles above a string of barges.

Wrexham was still ahead, moving less easily now, tiring. He passed the entrance to Limehouse Cut. He must be making for Kidney Stairs, the stone steps down to the river, where, if they were lucky, he would find a ferry waiting. If there were none waiting, he would see that before he began down, and he would keep on running. There were two more sets of stairs before the road curved twenty yards inland to Broad Street. At the Shadwell Docks there were more stairs again. He could lose his pursuers on any of them.

Gower gestured towards the river. ‘Steps!’ he shouted, bending a moment and gasping to catch his breath. He gestured with a wild swing of his arm. Then he straightened up and began running again, a couple of strides ahead of Pitt.

Pitt could see a ferry coming towards the shore, the boatman pulling easily at the oars. He would get to the steps a moment or two after Wrexham – in fact, Pitt and Gower would corner him nicely. Perhaps they could get the ferry to take them up to the Pool of London. He ached to sit down, even for that short while.

Wrexham reached the steps and ran down them, disappearing as if he had slipped into a hole. Pitt felt an upsurge of victory. The ferry was still twenty yards from where the steps would meet the water.

Gower let out a yell of triumph, waving his hand high.

They reached the top of the steps just as the ferry pulled away from underneath the shadow of the wall, Wrexham sitting in the stern. They were close enough to see the smile on his face and he half swivelled on the seat to see them. Then he faced forward, speaking to the ferryman and pointing to the further shore.

Pitt raced down the steps. His feet slithered on the wet stones and he only just regained his balance. He waved his arms at the other ferry, the one they had seen. ‘Here! Hurry!’ he shouted.

Gower shouted also, his voice high and desperate.

The ferryman increased his speed, throwing his full weight behind his oars, and in a matter of seconds he swung round next to the pier.

‘Get in, gents,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Where to?’

‘After that boat there,’ Gower gasped, choking on his own breath and pointing to the other ferry. ‘An extra half-crown in it for you if you catch up with him before he gets up Horseferry Stairs.’

Pitt landed in the boat behind him and immediately sat down so they could get underway. ‘He’s not going to Horseferry,’ he pointed out. ‘He’s going straight across. Look!’

‘Lavender Dock?’ Gower scowled, sitting in the seat beside Pitt. ‘What the hell for?’

‘Shortest way across,’ Pitt replied. ‘Get up to Rotherhithe Street and away.’

‘Where to?’

‘Nearest train station, probably. Or he might double back. Best place to get lost is among other people.’

They were pulling well away from the dock now and slowly catching up with the other ferry.

There were fewer ships moored here and they could make their way almost straight across. A string of barges was still fifty yards downstream, moving slowly against the tide. The wind off the water was cold. Without thinking what he was doing, Pitt hunched up and pulled his collar higher around his neck. It seemed like hours since he and Gower had burst into the brickyard and seen Wrexham crouched over the blood-soaked body of West, but it was probably little more than ninety minutes. Their information about whatever plot for violence West had known was gone with his death.

Pitt thought back to his last interview with Narraway, sitting in the office with the hot sunlight streaming through the window onto the piles of books and papers on the desk. Narraway’s face had been intensely serious under his greying mane of hair, his eyes almost black. He had spoken of the gravity of the situation, the rise of the passion to reform the old imperialism of Europe, violently, if necessary. It was no longer a matter of a few sticks of dynamite, an assassination here and there. There were whispers of the overthrow of governments by force, of the mobilising of armies, of people willing to sacrifice their own lives, and other people’s, to create a new order – a whole new world.

‘Some things need changing,’ Narraway had said with a wry bitterness. ‘No one but a fool would deny that there is injustice. But this would result in anarchy. God alone knows how wide this spreads, at least as far as France, Germany, and Italy, and by the sounds of it here in England as well. The rest of Europe went mad in forty-eight and it was over a couple of years later, with all the old tyrannies back in place, as strong as ever. The barricades came down. The reforms were overturned and everything reverted to the old ways!’

Pitt had stared at him, seeing a sadness in him he had never imagined before. With amazement he realised that Narraway regretted the death of those dreams, perhaps even more the death of the passionate, idealistic and naïve men and women who had sacrificed their lives in pursuit of them.

Narraway had shaken his head, as if awakening himself. ‘This is a different breed, Pitt, and the tide of victory is with them now, but not the violence. We don’t change that way in Britain, we evolve slowly. We’ll get there, but not with murder, and not by force.’

The wind was fading, the water smoother.

They were nearly at the south bank of the river. It was time to make a decision. Gower was looking at him, waiting.

Wrexham’s ferry was almost at the Lavender Dock.

‘He’s going somewhere,’ Gower said urgently. ‘Do we want to get him now, sir – or see where he leads us? If we take him we won’t know who’s behind this. He won’t talk: he’s no reason to. We practically saw him kill West. He’ll hang for sure.’ He waited, frowning.

‘Do you think we can keep him in sight?’ Pitt asked.

‘Yes, sir.’ Gower did not hesitate.

‘Right.’ The decision was clear in Pitt’s mind. ‘Stay back then. We’ll split up if we have to.’

The ferry hung back until Wrexham had climbed up the narrow steps and all but disappeared. Then, scrambling to keep up, Pitt and Gower went after him.

They were careful to follow now from more of a distance, sometimes together but more often a sufficient space between them that a casual onlooker would have taken them for strangers merely travelling in approximately the same direction.

But Wrexham seemed to be so absorbed in his own concern now that he never looked behind him. He must have assumed he had lost them when he crossed the river. Indeed, they were very lucky that he had not. With the amount of water-borne traffic, he must have failed to realise that one ferry was dogging his path.

At the railway station there were at least a couple of dozen other people at the ticket counter.

‘Better get tickets all the way, sir,’ Gower urged. ‘We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves from not paying the fare.’

Pitt gave him a sharp look, but forebore from making the remark on the edge of his tongue.

‘Sorry,’ Gower murmured with a slight smile.

Once on the platform they remained close to a knot of other people waiting. Neither of them spoke, as if they were strangers to each other. The precaution seemed unnecessary. Wrexham barely glanced at either of them, nor at anyone else.

The first train was going north. It drew in and stopped. Most of the waiting passengers got onto it, but not Wrexham. Pitt wished he had a newspaper to hide his face and appear to take his attention. He should have thought of it before.

‘I think I can hear the next train,’ Gower said a minute or two later, almost under his breath. ‘It should be to Southampton – eventually. We might have to change . . .’ The rest of what he said was cut off by the noise of the engine as the train pulled in, belching steam. The doors flew open and passengers poured out.

Pitt struggled to keep Wrexham in sight. He waited until the last moment in case he should get out again and lose them, then he and Gower boarded a carriage behind his.

‘He could be going anywhere,’ Gower said grimly. His fair face was set in hard lines, his hair poking up where he had run his fingers through it. ‘One of us had better get out at every station to see he doesn’t get off at the last moment and we lose him.’

‘Of course,’ Pitt agreed.

‘Do you think West really had something for us?’ Gower went on. ‘He could have been killed for some other reason. A quarrel? Those revolutionaries are pretty volatile. Could have been a betrayal within the group? Even a rivalry for leadership?’ He was watching Pitt intently, his blue eyes staring so hard it was as if he were trying to read inside Pitt’s mind.

‘I know that,’ Pitt said quietly. He was by far the senior, and the decision was his to make. Gower would never question him on that. It was little comfort now, in fact rather a lonely thought. He remembered Narraway’s certainty that there was something planned that would make the recent random bombings seem trivial. In February of last year, 1894, a French anarchist had tried to destroy the Royal Observatory at Greenwich with a bomb. Thank heaven he had failed. In June, President Carnot of France had been assassinated. In August a man named Caserio had been executed for the crime.

Just before Christmas, French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted of treason, but that was simply a scandal of persecution and prejudice. In January of this year Dreyfus had been sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Everywhere there was anger and uncertainty in the air.

It was a risk to take the chance of following Wrexham, but to seize on an empty certainty was a kind of surrender. ‘We’ll follow him,’ Pitt replied. ‘Do you have enough money for another fare, if we have to separate to be sure of not losing him?’

Gower fished in his pocket, counted what he had. ‘As long as it isn’t all the way to Scotland, yes, sir. Please God it isn’t Scotland.’ He smiled with a twisted kind of misery. ‘You know in February they had the coldest temperature ever recorded in Britain? Nearly fifty degrees of frost! If the poor bastard let off a bomb to start a fire you could hardly blame him!’