Even his present distress did not shadow his happiness more than on the surface. He hated quarreling with Pitt, and he knew that he had behaved miserably. He would not tell Gracie. It would only upset her, and, if he were honest with himself, he was ashamed of it now. Pitt did not want to find corruption in the police any more than Tellman did. It might not cut quite as deeply for Pitt, however. Pitt had other heroes to admire, other men and other causes, even if he had begun much as Tellman had.

  Tellman’s father had been born into desperate poverty, the kind where you live from one meal to the next, and go to bed hungry every night. He had worked hard and died young in an industrial accident. Other victims of the accident had survived, but his body was not strong enough to heal from the broken bones, and septicemia had eventually killed him.

  Tellman himself had been slight as a child, some might say scrawny. He had been too clever to be easy friends with other boys, who were afraid of his intelligence and lashed out at him the only way they knew how, with fists and boots. Even sitting here by his own fire, Tellman could feel the sweat of fear in his body, and then the chill, as he remembered standing facing them in the street, knowing what was coming.

  There had been three boys in particular who had held at bay their own inadequacies by hurting him. He could hear the high-pitched giggle of one of them even in his nightmares. He could remember the pain from one time to the next, as if it were going on even before it happened. But it was the humiliation that was the worst. He wanted more than anything else on earth not to be afraid of them, but it was beyond his power. It was the fear they fed on, the spur it gave them to terrify the boy who consistently outdid them in the classroom. Even if he said nothing, pretended he did not know the answers when he did, they knew it. The need to succeed at something had driven him on. Perhaps the master had realized what was happening, but his intervention would only have made it worse.

  The time he could not bear to remember was the one in the school yard, near the rubbish bins, when he had been so afraid that he had wet himself. The fat boy with the giggle had laughed so hard he had choked, and called him Pisspants for the rest of his school days. Tellman still flushed hot at the memory. He had had daydreams about beating the boy to a pulp.

  He had never told anyone about that. He had tried to forget it, deny its existence in his mind. Over the years he had all but succeeded.

  So why did it come back now, this quiet evening in front of the fire with Gracie sitting not two yards away?

  Because the certainties that made him strong were crumbling. He had seen in the police a force for good, a protection of the ordinary man or woman who had been victimized physically or had their belongings stolen or damaged. He was used to poverty and he knew that a few shillings was a fortune to some, the difference between eating and going hungry and cold. One pair of boots might be all a man had. Theft was a major crime to such people.

  And for a boy without brothers and sisters, belonging to a group was of intense importance. The friendship, the loyalty, the unspoken trust were rewards greater than the money, although pay was regular in the police, and it meant he could have a home, eat every day, be warm in the winter. Above all, he could look at his own thin, lantern-jawed face in the glass when he shaved and see a man he could respect, a man who did not fail when others looked to him for help. That was happiness.

  Thomas Pitt had been his first hero. He was human, and certainly fallible, but he was never dishonest, and even when he seemed beaten, he never gave up. Rumpled, wild-haired, pockets bulging, he always knocked on the front door, and, speaking quietly, insisted on going in.

  Tellman recalled vividly the first time he got in the middle of a street fight to protect a man who had been alone and terrified, and Pitt had praised him. He had stood on the pavement, his uniform muddy, boots soaked from the gutter, burning with pride.

  Police were better regarded now, and Pitt was head of Special Branch. No one treated him lightly; he knew too much about them.

  Yet Pitt thought the police were corrupt, so much so that they had brought upon themselves the terrible bombing at Lancaster Gate. Tellman could still smell the smoke and the charred flesh in his dreams.

  No one deserved to die like that!

  Not that Pitt had said they did. He was just afraid that the bombing could be in revenge for some injustice rather than an anarchist lashing out at the establishment.

  Quarreling with Pitt had been stupid. They had both been tired and, more than that, afraid. The old order was falling to pieces and suddenly they had to face that fact.

  Pitt was right, even if he had been clumsy in the way he put it. And perhaps Tellman had been too quick to take offense, striking back without thinking.

  Gracie woke with a start and smiled at him, finding the sewing again. The piece she was working on was finished. It was one of his shirts. She was turning the collar. He tended to fray them running his finger around the inside when he was worried. He liked her carefulness. She had learned that from Charlotte, when Pitt was still in his early days.

  “So are yer going ter tell me,” Gracie asked, “or sit there all evening letting me worry about yer?”

  “There’s nothing really wrong,” he lied. He did not want to tell her the truth. She would have no respect for him if she knew how much he depended on his belief in the men he worked with. If he tried to explain, it would all lead back to the school yard, and he could not bear that. She must never know about that.

  “Just feel badly about the Lancaster Gate bombing,” he added. “We aren’t really getting anywhere. Not yet.”

  Her face crumpled a little. She knew he was evading answering her properly. He felt guilty, but he must not tell her all the things that were churning in his mind. It was his duty to protect her from them. He should make an effort to change his expression and occupy his thoughts with something else. He mentioned one or two other things in the news.

  “Don’t change the subject, Samuel,” she responded. “Yer got a face on yer like a burst boot! There’s something wrong real bad.”

  “Ednam died today,” he answered abruptly. “We thought he’d make it. He was the most senior officer. We have to defend his reputation, now that he can’t do it.”

  “And that in’t going to be easy, eh?” she replied.

  She was too quick. She could read him as if he were an open book. It made him feel exposed. Her opinion of him mattered more than anybody else’s—in fact, more than everybody else’s added together. She needed to believe that he was strong enough to look after her, especially now that she was going to have another child. She needed to believe in the police too. The city held millions of people who needed to believe that the police were both honest and brave. If that belief went, so eventually did everything else.

  How was he going to deal with it, if Pitt was right and the whole force had crumbling patches in it, like rotten wood holding up a house? If the bad bits fell, buckled, couldn’t take the weight, then the good bits fell with them! Everything came down, and there was no shelter left at all.

  “Samuel!” Gracie said sharply, cutting across his thoughts.

  He looked at her, and saw the fear in her eyes.

  “There’s summink bad that yer won’t tell me,” she went on. “ ’Ow can I do anything about it if I don’t know?”

  He smiled and felt a sudden rush of emotion. How like Gracie, all five foot nothing of her, but ready to fight anybody to protect her own. He was being selfish shutting her out, and he recognized it at last. By doing it he was leaving her frightened and alone, as if he didn’t think she was capable of helping, or worth trusting. He could see it in her eyes, the hurt far outweighing the fear. He wasn’t protecting her; he was protecting himself.

  He sat in silence for several moments, trying to find the words that would frighten her least. She had all the courage in the world, but she was still so very vulnerable. She had a child who was not yet two years old, and in another six months she would have a second one. How could he look after her properly if he put himself in jeopardy also?

  She was waiting. He could see it clearly in her face, the pain over the fact that he did not trust her. He had been selfish. He must repair that.

  He started with the worst part. “I quarreled with Pitt.” He could hear the reluctance in his own voice, the raw edge of it. “He thinks we need to find out if certain accusations against the police are true…”

  “Why?” she said instantly. “Who said anything? Does ’e believe it, or is ’e trying ter prove it in’t right? Yer can’t just stick yer ’ead in the sand an’ pretend it’s all right. Yer wouldn’t if it was about anyone else. People’ve got a right to trust the police.”

  “I know that. But the fact that we’re looking into it means it could be true,” he explained. “And the police know that, and so does everyone else. It must be possible, or we wouldn’t be looking!” It was so reasonable, and yet it pained him even to think of it.

  “What d’yer think they’ve done?” she asked, staring at him very solemnly, her sewing forgotten. “Why don’t yer tell me straight out?”

  He drew in breath to deny it vehemently, then he met her eyes and the denial melted away. She would know he was lying: she always knew. Not that he did lie, but sometimes he evaded telling her everything. Gracie had gentleness, and great patience with her child, but she had no equivocation in her whatever when it came to telling the truth. He had seen her tell people to mind their own business, but never had he heard her prevaricate. With people you loved, an evasion was the same thing as a lie.

  “The more we investigate the bombing, the less it looks like an anarchist gone mad, and a lot like it could be somebody that meant those police in particular to be killed,” he admitted. Now that the subject was begun it was not as difficult as he had expected. In fact, it was almost easier than continuing to evade it.

  “ ’Ow d’yer work that out?” Her face was totally sober and she asked as if she were another detective asking for facts. He remembered with a jolt that that was probably how she saw herself. When she was still working for Charlotte and Pitt she had overheard most of the long discussions of cases that had gone on around the kitchen table. She had not been afraid to put her own suggestions in. Once Pitt had actually sent her to work undercover as a maid at Buckingham Palace. She didn’t refer to it often, as if out of a kind of loyalty, but her eyes lit with pride when she did.

  “Because of the way they were lured to the house in Lancaster Gate,” Tellman answered. “It looks as if someone got them there particularly. He sent a note, very brief. He’d informed them of opium sales before, and been right, so they trusted him.”

  “So it were planned,” she said with certainty. “Mebbe weeks before ’e did it?”

  He had not looked at it that way before. She was right. “Yes,” he agreed. “But we don’t know why he did it because we have no idea who he is.”

  “Then Mr. Pitt’s right: yer gotta look at them police what was baited to go there, and see wot they done so bad someone’d want ter blow ’em all up. An’ yer gotta look back ter before ’ooever it was began ter give ’em information about opium and that. Samuel, yer can’t just look the other way ’cos yer don’t like ter think it were a revenge for something as really ’appened! ’Ooever did this may be wicked, or mad even, but that’s not ter say ’e don’t ’ave ’is reasons! Or think ’e does, any which way. Yer can’t afford ter—”

  “I know that,” he cut across her. “But they were good men, Gracie. They’ve been in the police for years. Of course there are things that go on that aren’t right. I hate to think of it, but there’ll be those who lost their temper with someone who was beating a woman, or a child, and they gave ’em a good belting back.” He took a breath. “And sometimes we lose evidence, or don’t take it the right way, and then even make up a lie so it can still be used, when we know damn well a man’s guilty. And sometimes we let people go when we shouldn’t. But you don’t set off bombs that kill everyone in sight because of something like that!”

  She looked at him very gravely, her small face without a flicker of light in it. “Then it must be summink worse. An’ yer can’t afford ter pretend as yer can’t see it. Blind people walk over the edge o’ cliffs, and I don’t want that to ’appen ter you…ter us.”

  The emotion welled up inside him till his throat was tight and his eyes stung.

  “I know that. I promise.”

  “Good. An’ remember as it’s a promise, Samuel Tellman! Life don’t take no excuses. ‘I didn’t see’ in’t no good if wot you mean is ‘I didn’t look neither’!”

  “I know that…”

  At last she smiled. “Yer want a cup o’ tea? I got cake.”

  He nodded, swallowing back the feelings inside him. He wanted her to go into the kitchen and leave him a moment to compose himself. It all mattered too much. He had everything in the world to lose.

  —

  IN THE MORNING TELLMAN began straightaway, going back to the station where Ednam had worked. He hated doing it, but once he had accepted the necessity, there was no point in putting it off. On the contrary, putting it off made things worse. It served no purpose, and it made him feel like a coward. That was a word Pitt had used that haunted him. The fear of being a coward had at times made him rash, not brave but foolhardy. It was all back to the school yard again, standing up to people bigger than you were, to prove to yourself that you were not afraid.

  Was there reason to fear this time?

  He reported to the sergeant at the desk and insisted, against some show of reluctance, that he see Superintendent Whicker again. He waited ten minutes before he was shown to his office.

  He began with an expression of sympathy for Ednam’s death.

  He looked at Superintendent Whicker’s face, and could read nothing in it. Was that a man concealing his grief in front of a comparative stranger? Or was his expression deliberately blank because his feelings were more complex, perhaps equivocal, toward men he had not liked?

  “Going to catch who did it, sir,” Tellman added grimly. “I shall need your assistance, if you can spare a man, please, Superintendent.”

  “Yes, Tellman. I’ll spare you who I can. You’ll understand we’re a bit shorthanded, having lost five men.” He reminded Tellman of it bluntly, and with an undisguised resentment.

  “Of course, sir. I’ll try to be quick.” Tellman took a chance. “You’ll have read what some people have started saying in the papers. We’ve got to get at the truth before anyone else does. Need to protect our own from accusations that come out of old grudges or fears gone wild.”

  “Yes, Inspector,” Whicker agreed.

  Tellman looked at him more closely. If there was any emotion in him, he was hiding it. Why? People expected anger, grief, even fear of what might happen next. What was it that was so deep within him that he showed nothing?

  “Where would you like to start?” Whicker asked tartly.

  Tellman thought of what Gracie had said. “Let’s say a month or so before the first tip-off you had from this fellow that calls himself Anno Domini,” he answered.

  Whicker looked surprised. “Before?”

  “Yes, please. Let’s see the cases that Ednam, Newman, Yarcombe, Bossiney, and Hobbs were on.”

  “They didn’t work together that often, Inspector.”

  “No, I imagine not. I’ll just look at the cases in general, and see if I can find anything that gives me an idea.”

  “Did Special Branch put you up to this?” Whicker asked with raised eyebrows.

  “Not at all, sir. Don’t know I’m doing it,” Tellman said truthfully. “If there is anything, I’d like to get there before they do.” He watched Whicker’s face, waiting for the reaction.

  Whicker’s black eyes were unreadable. “You can have the same room as last time, and I’ll have Constable Drake bring you the records, Inspector.”

  “Start a month before the first contact from Anno Domini, if you please, sir. And come forward from that, a case at a time,” Tellman told him.

  “Yes, Inspector.” Whicker turned on his heel and left Tellman to wait.

  It was going to be a very long task, and Tellman was perfectly aware that the amount of cooperation he received might be deliberately small.

  Drake was a young man whose fair hair and a fair skin probably barely required him to shave. Tellman thought he looked too innocent to be a policeman of any effect at all, until he caught a glimpse of laughter in the man’s eyes that changed him altogether.

  “That’s the month before the Anno Domini tip-off, sir,” Drake said, putting a thick bundle of files on the table in front of Tellman. “I’ll bring the next lot up for you, sir, as soon as I get them all sorted.”

  “Thank you.” Tellman eyed the foot-high stack without pleasure. “Are any of the men who worked on these cases available, if I need to talk to them?”

  “Yes, sir. But best read them first, sir,” Drake replied, meeting Tellman’s eyes for an instant and then leaving without asking permission.

  Tellman worked all morning. He stopped for tea and a ham sandwich at lunchtime, and then went on again. It was so dull he had trouble keeping awake. It was exactly the sort of police work he was accustomed to. The notes were those such as he had made a score of times himself. He could have been any of these men. Their choice of words and their handwriting was individual, but now and again an exact phrase was repeated, as if they had agreed on what to write.

  It was only when he realized that several files were out of order, and he rearranged them, that he began to see a pattern. He went back and read them again. There was one case in particular of a man who had been injured in a brawl and had later given information, been charged with theft, and found not guilty. It was Yarcombe’s case, then passed to Bossiney.