“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.