Treachery at Lancaster Gate (24 page)

Bradshaw cleared his throat again, as if he did not trust his voice. “Is this…is this true?”

“I don't know. As I said, it is his belief. And for the purpose of driving his actions, that is all that would be necessary.”

“And he is still addicted to opium?”

“Yes. It is killing him, which he knows, so he has very little to lose.”

“Poor devil. Do you know who his supplier is?” Bradshaw's voice was not much more than a whisper.

“No. He won't tell me. I am not surprised. The man stands between him and the agony of withdrawal. I believe if it is sudden enough, in some cases it can lead to a terrible death.”

“Indeed,” Bradshaw said hoarsely.

Pitt hesitated, looking for something to say that was not shallow, as if he had neither brain nor heart. He could not help believing that Bradshaw had someone intensely close to him who was in just such a private hell.

“What are you going to do?” Bradshaw asked.

“I don't know,” Pitt answered carefully. “First of all I must make sure that it is as I believe.”

“And if it is?”

“Arrest him. If we hold him in custody I will see that the police surgeon gives him that sufficient to manage his pain. I can't leave him free: he'll bomb again. He wants us to reopen the case.”

“But you said the other man was hanged!”

“He was. Our man's whole purpose is to clear his name.”

“Who is it?”

“I'll tell you that, sir, if I am right. Until then I must save those close to him from any breath of scandal.”

Bradshaw's face was gray.

“For God's sake, be careful. Suppliers of opium, or any other drug, have no pity. They'll kill you, if you threaten them. I mean it, Pitt. They will!”

“Yes, I daresay they will,” Pitt agreed.

Bradshaw started to say something else, and then changed his mind.

Pitt ended the awkwardness by excusing himself, closing the door behind him. He walked away exhausted by the pity that had seared through him for Alexander, for his family, for Bradshaw, who he was now certain was trapped in the same hell.

Even as he went down the steps into the street, he was aware that such grief could touch anyone. Happiness was fragile, and infinitely precious.

P
ITT FOUND IT EVEN
harder to contact Alexander this time, but it was imperative that he do so. He could not much longer put off arresting him, no matter what he had promised Jack or how much pity he felt for Alexander. And when that happened he would lose the chance to question him and uncover the important facts he was still missing.

He did not expect Alexander to tell him everything, but if Alexander wanted to be believed, then he would be able to give a list of the people he had spoken to, the times and places, at least roughly. Pitt could check them. An example of Alexander's handwriting could be compared with the Anno Domini notes. It all needed proving. Above all, there was the question of the supplier who had failed to turn up at the meeting where Tyndale had been shot. Why? And how did Ednam even know of the proposed rendezvous? There was something major missing.

More than that, Pitt needed to find proof that Alexander really had tried to raise the Dylan Lezant case again and make someone listen to his account. He could start looking without knowing when the attempts began, and to whom they were directed, but it would certainly take far longer than if Alexander told him.

Pitt found Alexander eventually, at about eleven o'clock at night, staggering along an alley a hundred yards from his flat. He had bumped into a lamppost and was standing, leaning against it, dazed in its ghostly light.

Pitt was tired, cold, and short-tempered. It was the third time he had passed this way and he had been ready to give up and go home.

When he saw Alexander's face his anger vanished. He stepped forward and took the young man by both arms, as if he expected to have to support his weight.

“Alexander!” he said. “Alexander!”

Alexander blinked and looked at him hard for a moment before recognizing him. “Oh. It's you. What do you want now?” He sounded not aggressive, just infinitely tired.

“When did you last eat?” Pitt asked him.

“No idea. Why? Does it matter?”

Pitt did not know. Food did you little good if you could not hold it in your stomach long enough to digest it.

“Come with me,” he said firmly, as if he would not accept a refusal. “At least get warm. There's a place along here that's open all night.”

Alexander stared at him. “What do you want?”

“Details. I want to know all the things you did to try to make them listen to you and look further into Lezant's case.”

“Why?” Alexander stared at him, still leaning his weight against the lamppost. He blinked several times, trying to focus his mind.

“I want to know who ignored you,” Pitt replied.

Alexander shrugged. “Who gives a damn now?”

“I do.”

Alexander slumped and Pitt was obliged to hold him up so he did not slide into a heap on the pavement. He would be hard to raise up again.

“Come on!” he said sharply. “You'll freeze out here. Come and get warm inside, and at least have a hot cup of tea.”

Alexander made an effort, and allowed Pitt to lift him. Possibly because he hadn't the energy to fight anymore.

Half an hour later they were both warmed by the pleasant clatter of a café open for workers all night. They had hot, over-strong tea with too much sugar in it. Pitt all but gagged on it, but Alexander drank it without apparent awareness of its taste. He ate half a bacon sandwich, and seemed rather better for it.

He looked at Pitt curiously. He returned to the earlier subject. “Why do you want to know so exactly? Are you going to prosecute me for it? No, of course not. It's evidence, isn't it? It gives me a motive for killing Ednam and his men. They ignored me. And if I had found proof, then they would have hanged, and not Dylan.” He blinked, knowing he had made an error. “No…that's out of order, isn't it? I mean, out of sequence. I went on trying to make them listen, after Dylan's death. It's to hang me, isn't it…for the bombing? Give me a motive. Otherwise why would I?” He shook his head very slightly. “No evidence. No one saw me, or you'd have arrested me already.”

Pitt looked at him across the narrow wooden table, the light coming from oil lamps set at each end. The shadows were sharp, throwing Alexander's features into an exaggerated hollowness.

Pitt smiled. “So I would. But isn't that what you want? If not, why blow up a second building?”

“You know I did that?” Alexander's expression was unreadable. It could have been anything from irony to tragedy in his face.

“Of course. You left the handkerchief for me, remember?” Pitt answered gently. “But I want to know who killed Tyndale, and why. If it was accidental or deliberate, and if police knowingly sent an innocent man to the gallows.”

Alexander winced at the word “gallows.” In that moment Pitt knew that the pain was still there, still deep, and that whatever he had done, Alexander would not stop until the truth was exposed, or he was dead, whichever came first.

He was going to die. The shadow of it was already across his eyes. Pitt stopped trying to deny it to himself, and was overwhelmed with his own anger and pity. He knew he would do anything he could to ensure justice came while Alexander could still see it.

“Tell me all the people you saw,” he urged. “Or tried to see, and how far you got with them. If possible, tell me approximately when.”

Alexander nodded, smiling, as Pitt took out his notebook and held the pencil ready.

H
AVING HAD JUST FIVE
hours in bed altogether, Pitt woke early the next day, and after a quick cup of tea he began to visit the people whose names Alexander had given him.

The first was a man called Lessing, who was in charge of the process of appeals. Pitt gained an immediate appointment because of his position, which he was more than willing to use to its utmost.

“I don't see what this has to do with the security of the nation,” Lessing said irritably. “This office is extremely busy!”

“Then let us not waste your valuable time in explanations as to why I cannot tell you the reasons for my request,” Pitt replied with a straight face and an equally tart tongue. “Did Alexander Duncannon, or anyone else, ask you to look further into the circumstances of the case against Dylan Lezant?”

“It will take me some time…” Lessing began, his lips pursed as if in distaste.

Pitt gave him the date and approximate time of day Alexander had said he called.

Lessing glared at him. “It seems you already know,” he pointed out with a touch of sarcasm.

“I know what was told to me,” Pitt replied. “I expect you to either confirm it or deny it. Preferably with written records, which I presume you have?”

“We don't let such records out of this office.” Lessing looked at Pitt with little patience. He expected a man of Pitt's position to know that without being told.

“I want to read it, not take it!” Pitt stared at him almost unblinkingly. “Don't waste my time or your own, Mr. Lessing. Was the request made, or not?”

“We don't keep records of every frivolous request that comes to our doors…” Lessing began.

Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Police corruption is not regarded as frivolous by Special Branch, Mr. Lessing. Most particularly when it involves manslaughter, perjury, and judicial murder. And now it would appear multiple murder in a bombing. We see it as very serious…indeed.”

Lessing looked pale, and furious. He had been caught off balance by what he regarded as deliberate deceit.

“It involved a rather hysterical young man accusing reputable police officers of having shot a bystander in a drug deal to which there were at least four witnesses, and the man concerned had been tried by a jury, found guilty, and hanged,” he said all in one breath. “There was nothing to investigate. And what is more, the young man complaining was clearly under the influence of drugs himself. He was staggering, slurring his words, and at times almost incomprehensible. He spoke of the dead man as if they were lovers.” He said the last word with a heavy intonation of disgust.

“I know who the complainant was.” Pitt's voice was tight now with barely controlled rage. His own helplessness to heal pain drove his response. “He is a young man of excellent family, his father highly respected. Unfortunately the young man suffered a severe injury from which he will never recover. Drugs were prescribed to him in order to make the pain bearable, at least most of the time. The hanged man was like a brother to him, a companion in suffering. Perhaps that is not something you have experienced. But it is unfortunate that you should put such an interpretation on it. It says more about you than it does about either of the young men.”

Lessing's face flamed hot with color, but he knew better than to lose his temper with the head of Special Branch. Pitt realized that without surprise. He had seen that flicker of fear when men looked at Victor Narraway, but never recognized it so clearly with himself. It was gratifying, and alarming. Please heaven he never got used to it.

“Did you inquire into the issue?” he asked with a smile that was more a baring of his teeth.

“Of course not!” Lessing attempted to be derisive. “The case was tried and decided.”

“I thought appeals were your business? Do you always decide ahead of inquiry that the verdict was unquestionable? Then there hardly seems any purpose to your existence!”

“Of course not! But usually it is. ‘Twelve good men and true' are generally right in their decisions. Do you always question the jury's verdict?” He mimicked Pitt's tone with some satisfaction.

“Yes, if it seems to make little sense,” Pitt snapped back.

“It made perfect sense,” Lessing told him. “Lezant went to purchase opium to feed his addiction. He intended to meet his supplier in an alley, but when he got there he found the police waiting for him. He panicked and shot at them, and unfortunately he killed a bystander. Or possibly the bystander was actually the dealer.”

“You are slandering an innocent man, Mr. Lessing,” Pitt told him coldly. “Tyndale was investigated exhaustively—I have since done so again myself—and his record is without blemish.” He was exaggerating very slightly, but he was furious with this man. There was no evidence whatever against Tyndale, but his involvement was not as impossible as Pitt was suggesting.

“All right!” Lessing said with equal anger. “So he was merely a passerby. So much the more tragic that Lezant should have shot him.”

“Did you know Tyndale was in the opposite direction from the police—in fact behind Lezant?” Pitt asked him.

Lessing's eyebrows shot up.

“Really? Who told you that?”

Pitt could not tell him that Alexander had, when he had spoken to him at Christmas.

“The evidence,” he responded. “If you had read it you would conclude so yourself. The alley had two entrances, and a small cutting through which one might make a shortcut from the main road to where Mr. Tyndale lived. He was on that cutting, making his way home.”

“How do you know?” Lessing demanded.

“I have been there and compared it with the police drawings, and their testimony,” Pitt told him. “If you looked at it yourself, where Tyndale's body was found, and the bullet holes on the wall of the building, you would see that Tyndale was behind Lezant, but in front of all five of the police.”

“Are you saying that five policemen lied, and one hysterical opium addict, who was not even there, is telling the truth? He could've easily turned around and shot the man. You're crazy! You must be on some kind of a—” He looked at Pitt's face and bit off the words he was going to say.

“If you go to the scene instead of reading other people's accounts of it,” Pitt told him very carefully and in a measured voice, “you will see that what the police say doesn't make any sense. And Alexander Duncannon says he was there. In fact he had the money to make the opium purchase.”