Betrayal at Lisson Grove (4 page)

‘Do you want to give up?’ Gower asked. His voice was tight with disappointment and Pitt thought he heard a trace of contempt in it.

‘No.’ There was no uncertainty in the decision. Special Branch was not primarily about justice for crimes, it was about preventing civil violence and the betrayal, subversion or overthrow of the government. They were too late to save West’s life. ‘No, I don’t,’ he repeated.

 

When they disembarked in the broadening daylight it was not difficult to pick Wrexham out from the crowd and follow him. He didn’t go, as Pitt had feared, to the train station, but into the magnificently walled old city. They did not dare lose sight of him, or Pitt would have taken time to look with far more interest at the massive ramparts as they went in through a vast entrance gate, which would have allowed several carriages to pass abreast. Once inside, narrow streets crisscrossed each other, the doors of the buildings flush with the footpaths. Dark walls towered four or five storeys high in uniform grey-black stone. It had a stern beauty he would have liked to explore, as if in those few yards they had stepped back in history. Knights on horseback would have ridden these streets, or swaggering corsairs straight from plunder at sea.

But they had to keep close to Wrexham. He was walking quickly as if he knew precisely where he was going, and not once did he look behind him. If he were out of their sight for more than a few seconds they could lose him. A knock at any of the entrances and he would disappear.

It was perhaps fifteen minutes later, when they were further to the south, when Wrexham stopped. He knocked briefly, and was let into a large house just off a stone-paved square, which was actually little more than a doubling of the width of street to perhaps thirty feet across. A slender tree decorated it, softening the harshness of the lines and giving it grace and character.

Pitt and Gower waited for nearly an hour, moving around, trying not to look conspicuous, but Wrexham did not come out again. Pitt imagined him having a hot breakfast and a wash and shave, and clean clothes. He said as much to Gower.

Gower rolled his eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s a lot easier being the villain,’ he said ruefully. ‘I could do very well by bacon, eggs, sausages, fried potatoes, then fresh toast and marmalade and a good pot of tea.’ Then he grinned. ‘Sorry. I hate to suffer alone.’

‘You’re not!’ Pitt responded with feeling. ‘We’ll do something like that, before we go and send a telegram to Narraway, then find out who lives in number seven,’ he glanced up at the wall, ‘Rue St-Martin.’

‘It’ll be hot coffee and fresh bread,’ Gower told him. ‘Apricot jam, if you’re lucky. Nobody understands marmalade except the British.’

‘Don’t they understand bacon and eggs?’ Pitt asked incredulously.

‘Omelette, maybe?’

‘It isn’t the same!’ Pitt said with disappointment.

‘Nothing is,’ Gower agreed. ‘I think they do it on purpose.’

After another ten minutes of waiting, during which Wrexham still did not emerge, they walked back along the way they had come. They found an excellent café from which drifted the tantalising aroma of fresh coffee and warm bread.

Gower gave Pitt a questioning look.

‘Definitely,’ Pitt agreed.

There was, as Gower had suggested, thick, home-made apricot jam, and unsalted butter. There was also a dish of cold ham and other meats, and hard-boiled eggs. Pitt was more than satisfied by the time they rose to leave. Gower had asked the
patron
for directions to the post office. He also enquired as casually as possible, where they might find lodgings, and if number seven Rue St-Martin was a house of that description, adding that someone had mentioned it.

Pitt waited. He could see from the satisfaction in Gower’s face as they left and strode along the pavement that the answer had pleased him.

‘Belongs to an Englishman called Frobisher,’ he said with a smile. ‘Bit of an odd fellow, according to the
patron
. Lot of money, but eccentric. Fits the locals’ idea of what an English upper-class gentleman should be. Lived here for several years and swears he’ll never go home. Give him half a chance, and he’ll tell anyone what’s wrong with Europe in general, and England in particular.’ He gave a slight shrug and his voice was disparaging. ‘Number seven is definitely not a public lodging house, but he has guests more often than not, and the
patron
does not like the look of them. Subversives, he says. But then I gathered he is pretty conservative in his opinions. He suggested we would find Madame Germaine’s establishment far more to our liking, and gave me the address.’ He looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.

In honesty, Pitt could only agree. ‘We’ll send a telegram to Narraway, then see if Madame Germaine can accommodate us. You’ve done very well.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Gower increased very slightly the spring in his step and even started to whistle a little tune, rather well.

At the post office Pitt sent a telegram to Narraway: ‘Staying St Malo. Friends here we would like to know better. Need funds. Please send to local post office, soonest. Will write again.’

Until they received a reply, they would be wise to conserve what money they had left. However, they would find Madame Germaine, trusting that she had vacancies and would take them in.

‘Could be a while,’ Gower said thoughtfully. ‘I hope Narraway doesn’t expect us to sleep under a hedge. Wouldn’t mind in August, but April’s a bit sharp.’

Pitt did not bother to reply. It was going to be a long, and probably boring, duty. He was thinking of Charlotte at home, and his children, Jemima and Daniel. He missed them, but especially Charlotte, the sound of her voice, her laughter, the way she looked at him. They had been married for fourteen years, but every so often he was still overtaken by surprise that she had apparently never regretted it.

It had cost her her comfortable position in society, and the financial security she had been accustomed to, as well as the dinner parties, the servants, the carriages, the privileges of rank.

She had not said so – it would be heavy-handed – but in return she had gained a life of interest and purpose. Frequently she had been informally involved in his cases, at which she had considerable skill, although far less often since he had moved to Special Branch, where so much of the work was secret. She had married not for convenience but for love, and in dozens of small ways she had left him in no doubt of that.

Dare he send her a telegram as well? In this strange French street with its different sounds and smells, a language he understood little of, he ached for the familiar. But the telegram to Narraway was to a special address. If Wrexham were to ask the post office for it, it would reveal nothing. If Pitt allowed his loneliness for home to dictate his actions and communicate with Charlotte, he would have to give his home address. That might be a weakness for which he would pay at the very least in anxiety, at most in real fear, and perhaps even death. He should not let this peaceful street in the April sun, and a good breakfast, erase from his mind the memory of West lying in the brickyard with his throat slashed open and his blood oozing out onto the stones.

‘Yes, we’ll do that,’ he said aloud to Gower. ‘Then we will do what we can, discreetly, to learn as much as possible about Mr Frobisher.’

 

It was not difficult to observe number seven, Rue St-Martin. It was near the towering wall of the city, on the seaward side. Only fifty yards away, there was a flight of steps up to the walkway around the top. It was a perfect place from which to stand and gaze out to sea at the ever-changing horizon, or watch the boats tacking across the harbour in the wind, their sails billowing, careful to avoid the rocks, which were picturesque and highly dangerous. In turning to talk to each other, it was natural for them to lean for a few minutes on one elbow and gaze down at the street and the square. One could observe anybody coming or going without seeming to.

In the afternoon of the first day, Pitt checked at the post office. There was a telegram from Narraway, and arrangements for sufficient money to last them at least a couple of weeks. There was no reference to West, or the information he might have given, but Pitt did not expect there to have been. He walked back to the square, passing a girl in a pink dress and two women with baskets of shopping. He climbed up the steps on the wall again and found Gower leaning against the buttress at the top. His face was raised to the westering sun, which was gold in the late afternoon. He seemed to have his eyes shut and be smiling up into the light. He looked like any typical young Englishman on holiday.

Pitt stared out over the sea, watching the light on the water. ‘Narraway replied,’ he said quietly, not looking at Gower. ‘We’ll get the money. The amount he’s sending, he expects us to learn all we can.’

‘Thought he would.’

Gower did not turn either, and barely moved his lips. He could have been drifting into sleep, his weight relaxed against the warm stone. ‘There’s been some movement while you were gone. One man left, dark hair, very French clothes. Two went in.’ His voice became a little higher, more tightly pitched. ‘I recognised one of them – Pieter Linsky. I’m quite sure. He has a very distinctive face, and a limp from having been shot escaping from an incident in Lille. I think the man with him was Jacob Meister, but that’s only a guess.’

Pitt stiffened. He knew the names. Both men were active in socialist movements in Europe, travelling from one country to another fomenting as much trouble as they could, organising demonstrations, strikes, even riots in the cause of various reforms. But underneath all the demands was the underlying wish to overthrow the Establishment, the backbone that dominated society. Linsky in particular was unashamedly a revolutionary.

The remarkable thing was that their ideological differences were so intense it was extraordinary to see them together. The whole socialist movement was as passionate and idealistic as a new religion. There were the founders, who were viewed almost like apostles of the creed; dissenters were heretics. There were divisions and subdivisions, and the rivalries had all the fervour of evangelism. They even used these religious terms to speak of them.

Pitt let out his breath in a sigh. ‘I suppose you’re sure about Meister as well?’

Gower was motionless, still smiling in the sun, his chest barely rising and falling as he breathed. ‘Yes, sir, absolutely. I’ll bet that has something to do with what West was going to tell us. Those two together has to mean something pretty big.’

Pitt did not argue. The more he thought of it the more certain he was that it was indeed the storm Narraway had seen coming, and which was about to break over Europe if they did not prevent it.

‘We’ll watch them,’ Pitt said quietly, also trying to appear as if he were relaxed in the sun, enjoying a brief holiday. ‘See who else they contact.’

Gower smiled. ‘We’ll have to be careful. What do you think they’re planning?’

Pitt considered in silence, his eyes almost closed as he stared down at the painted wooden door of number seven. All kinds of ideas teemed through his head. A single assassination seemed less likely than a general strike, or even a series of bombings; otherwise a group would not need to gather. In the past, assassinations had been accomplished by a lone gunman, willing to sacrifice his own life. But now . . . who was vulnerable? Whose death would really change anything permanently?

‘Strikes?’ Gower suggested, interrupting his thought. ‘Europe-wide it could bring an industry to its knees.’

‘Possibly,’ Pitt agreed. His mind went to the big industrial and shipbuilding cities of the north. Or the coalminers of Durham, Yorkshire and Wales. There had been strikes before; they were always broken, and the men and their families suffered.

‘Demonstrations?’ Gower went on. ‘Thousands of people all out at once, in the right places, could block transport, or stop some major event, like the Derby?’

Pitt imagined it: the anger, the frustration of the horseracing and fashionable crowd at such an impertinence. He found himself smiling, but it was with a sour amusement. He had never been part of the society that watched the ‘sport of kings’, but he had met many of them during his police career. He knew their passion, their weaknesses, their blindness to others, and at times their extraordinary courage. Forcible interruption of one of the great events of the year was not the way to persuade them of anything. Surely any serious revolutionary had long ago learned that.

But what was?

Gower moved, drawing his attention to the fact that he had not replied.

‘Meister’s style, maybe,’ he said aloud. ‘But not Linsky’s. Something far more violent. And more effective.’

Gower shivered very slightly. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that. It rather takes the edge off the idea of a week or two in the sun, eating French food and watching the ladies going about their shopping. Have you seen the young girl from number sixteen, with the red hair?’

‘To tell you the truth, it wasn’t her hair I noticed,’ Pitt admitted, grinning broadly.

Gower laughed outright. ‘Nor I,’ he said. ‘I rather like that apricot jam, don’t you? And the coffee! Thought I’d miss a decent cup of tea, but I haven’t yet.’ He was silent again for a few minutes, then he turned his head. ‘What do you really think they have planned in England, sir – beyond a show of power? What do they want in the long run?’

The ‘sir’ reminded Pitt of his seniority, and therefore responsibility. It gave him a sharp jolt. There were scores of possibilities, a few of them serious. There had been a considerable rise in political power of left-wing movements in Britain recently. They were very tame compared with the violence of their European counterparts, but that did not mean they would remain that way. James Keir Hardie had stood for Parliament in Scotland, and lost, but three years ago he had stood for a working-class district just outside London, and become the Independent Labour Party’s first elected member. Pitt had never met him, but Charlotte’s brother-in-law was a member of Parliament, and he had said Keir Hardie was a remarkably decent man, just possessed of a few political notions Jack did not agree with.