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.
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, realising 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.
