The
Gower was still staring at Pitt, waiting, his face puzzled and keen.
“I think a concerted effort to bring about change would be more likely,” Pitt said slowly, weighing the words as he spoke.
“Change?” Gower said quizzically. “Is that a euphemism for overthrowing the government?”
“Yes, perhaps it is,” Pitt agreed, realizing how afraid he was as he said it. “An end to hereditary privilege, and the power that goes with it.”
“Dynamiters?” Gower’s voice was a whisper, the amusement completely vanished. “Another blowing up, like the gunpowder plot of the early 1600s?”
“I can’t see that working,” Pitt replied. “It would rally everyone against them. We don’t like to be pushed. They’ll need to be a lot cleverer than that.”
Gower swallowed hard. “What, then?” he said quietly.
“Something to destroy that power permanently. A change so fundamental it can’t be undone.” As he said the words they frightened him. Something violent and alien waited ahead of them. Perhaps they were the only ones who could prevent it.
Gower let out his breath in a sigh. He looked pale. Pitt watched his face, obliquely, as if he were still more absorbed in enjoying the sun, thinking of swiveling around to watch the sailing boats in the harbor again. They would have to rely on each other totally. It was going to be a long, tedious job. They dare not miss anything. The slightest clue could matter. They would be cold at night, often hungry or uncomfortable. Always tired. Above all they must not look suspicious. He was glad he liked Gower’s humor, his lightness of touch. There were many men in Special Branch he would have found it much harder to be with.
“That’s Linsky now, coming out of the door!” Gower stiffened, and then deliberately forced his body to relax, as if this sharp-nosed man with the sloping forehead and stringy hair were of no more interest than the baker, the postman, or another tourist.
Pitt straightened up, put his hands in his pockets quite casually, and went down the steps to the square after him.
Read on for an excerpt from Anne Perry’s
ONE
Monk smiled grimly as the oarsmen strained to bring the police boat around against the outgoing tide and the wash from barges on their way up to the Pool of London. He would not have given orders to shoot, even were he certain of not hitting anyone else in the teeming river traffic. He wanted Jericho Phillips alive, so he could see him tried and hanged.
In the prow of the boat, Orme swore under his breath. He was a grizzled man in his late fifties, a decade older than the lean and elegant Monk who had been in the Thames River Police Force only half a year. It was very different from the force ashore, where his experience lay, but more difficult for him was taking over the leadership of men to whom he was an outsider. He had a reputation for brilliance in detection, but also for a nature ruthless and hard to know, or to like.
Monk had changed since then. The accident eight years ago in 1856, which had wiped out his memory, had also given him a chance to begin again. He had learned to know himself through the eyes of others, and it had been bitterly enlightening. Not that he could explain that to anyone else.
They were gaining on the lighter, where Phillips was crouching out of sight, ignored by the man at the helm. Another hundred feet and they would draw level. There were five of them in the police boat. That was more than usual, but a man like Phillips might require the extra strength to take him down. He was wanted for the murder of a boy of thirteen or fourteen, Walter Figgis, known as Fig. Phillips was thin and undersized, which might have been what had kept him alive so long. His trade was in boys from the age of four or five up to the time when their voices changed and they began to assume some of the physical characteristics of adults, and they were thus of no use in his particular market of pornography.
The police boat’s bow sliced through the choppy water. Fifty yards away a pleasure boat went lazily upstream, perhaps eventually towards Kew Gardens. Colored streamers blew in the wind, and there was the sound of laughter mixed with music. Ahead of them nearly a hundred ships from coal barges to tea clippers were anchored in the Upper Pool. Lighters plied back and forth, and stevedores unloaded cargoes brought in from every corner of the earth.
Monk leaned forward a little, drawing in breath to urge the oarsmen to even greater effort, then changed his mind. It would look as if he did not trust them to do their best anyway. But they could not possibly want to catch Phillips as much as he did. It was Monk, not they, who had involved Durban in the Louvain case that had eventually cost him his life. And it was Monk whom Durban had recommended to take his place when he knew he was dying.
Orme had served with Durban for years, but if he resented Monk’s command he had never once shown it. He was loyal, diligent, even helpful, but for the most part, impossible to read. However, the longer Monk watched him, the more he realized Orme’s respect was necessary to his success, and more than that, he actually wanted it. The thought jarred inside him. He could not remember ever before having cared what a junior thought of him.
The lighter was only twenty feet ahead of them now and slowing as it made way for another lighter crossing its bow, which was laden with casks of raw sugar from a schooner moored fifty yards away. The ship was riding high now with its load almost gone, its huge canvases furled, spars bare and circling gently as it rocked.
