The Whitechapel Conspiracy

chapter ELEVEN
After leaving Charlotte, Pitt walked on down the street towards the sugar factory. The heavy, sickly smell caught in his nose and throat, but not even the thought of standing the night watch there could dull the happiness that welled up inside him at having seen her, even for a short time. She was so exactly as his memory had recreated her in the long nights alone: the warmth of her, the line of her cheek, her lips, above all her eyes as she looked back at him.

He turned in at the factory gates, the huge building towering over him, the men jostling at his sides. All he wished to know was if they needed him that night. He called by to check most mornings.

"Yeah," the senior watchman said cheerfully. He looked tired today, his blue eyes faded and all but hidden by the folds of his skin.

"Right," Pitt replied regretfully. He would prefer a night's sleep. "How is your wife?"

The night watchman shook his head. "Poorly," he said with an attempt at a smile.

"I'm sorry." Pitt meant it. He always asked, and the answer varied from day to day, but she was failing and they both knew it. He stayed and talked a few moments longer. Wally was lonely and he always wanted a listening ear to share his anxieties.

Afterwards, Pitt hurried back towards Saul's workshop, now a trifle late. He was late from his first errand too, because a wagonload of barrels had spilled out onto the street, and he stopped and helped the carter put them back. The little bubble of peace inside him made him impervious to the gray streets, the anger and the fear that set nerves on edge.

He went back to Heneagle Street early. Isaac was not home yet and Leah was busy in the kitchen.

"That you, Thomas?" she called as she heard his footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.

He could smell cooking, sharp, sweet herbs. He was more accustomed to them now and had grown to like them.

"Yes," he answered. "How are you?"

She never responded directly. "Are you hungry? You should eat more... and not keep all those late hours at that factory. It's not good for you."

He smiled. "Yes, I am hungry, and I've got to do the early watch tonight."

"Then come and eat!"

He went upstairs first to wash his face and hands, and found the clean laundry she had laid on the chest for him. He picked up the shirt on top, and saw that she had turned the cuffs for him, placing the worn edges to the inside.

A wave of homesickness washed over him so overwhelmingly that for a moment he was almost unaware of the room around him. It was a simple domestic kindness, the sort of thing Charlotte did. He had seen her spend all evening mending, turning collars or cuffs, needle clicking against her thimble, light flashing silver on it as it wove in and out in tiny stitches.

Then he was furious for so many women like Leah Karansky, who were never asked whether they wanted revolution or what price they would pay for someone else's idea of social justice or reform. Perhaps all they wanted was their family safe at home at night, and enough food to put something on the table fit to eat.

He looked at Leah's stitches on his cuff and knew how long it had taken her to do. He must thank her, let her know he was mindful of the kindness, perhaps talk to her about something interesting as he did. Or better, listen to her with all his attention while she talked.

After supper, still smiling at Leah's stories, he walked into the sugar factory yard just as Wally arrived.

"Ah, you again!" Wally said cheerfully. "Wot d'yer do with all yer money, eh? Silk all day and sugar all night. I tell yer, somebody's 'avin' a soft life on yer labor, fer certain."

"Me, one day," Pitt said with a wink.

Wally laughed. " 'Ere, I 'eard a good story about a candle maker an' an old woman." And without waiting he proceeded to tell it with relish.

An hour later Pitt made his first round of his area of patrol, and Wally went in the opposite direction, still chuckling to himself. There was still a skeleton staff working. The boilers never went out, and he checked in each room, climbing the narrow stairs past every floor. The rooms were small, the ceilings low to cram in as many storeys as possible. The windows were tiny; from outside in the daylight the building looked almost blind. Now, of course, it was lit by lamps, carefully guarded because the syrup was highly flammable.

Each room he passed was filled with vats, casks, retorts and huge dish-shaped boilers and pans several feet wide. The few men still working glanced around, and he spoke a few words to them and continued on. The smell of raw, almost rotting sweetness was everywhere. He felt as if he never got it out of his clothes and hair.

Half an hour later he reported back down to Wally. They boiled a kettle on the brazier in the open yard and sat on old hogshead barrels in which the raw sugar came from the West Indies, and sipped the tea until it was cool enough to drink. They swapped stories and jokes; some of them were very long and only mildly funny, but it was the companionship that mattered.

Once or twice there was movement in the shadows. The first time, Wally went to investigate and returned to say he thought it had been a cat. The second time, Pitt went, and found one of the boiler men asleep behind a pile of casks. His slight stirring had upset one of them and sent it rolling across the cobbles.

They each completed another round, and another.

Once, Pitt saw a man leaving whom he did not recognize. He seemed older than most of the workers, but then life in Spitalfields aged people. It was the cast of his features which caught Pitt's attention: strong, fine-boned, dark complexioned. He kept his eyes averted, merely raising one hand in a quick salute, and light flashed for an instant on a dark-stoned ring. There was a sense of intelligence in him that remained in the memory even as Pitt returned to the yard and found Wally boiling the kettle again.

"Do many men leave shift at this time?" Pitt asked.

Wally shrugged. "A few. Bit early, but poor devils don't get thanked for it anyway. Sloped off 'ome ter bed, I daresay. Good luck ter 'im. Wouldn't mind me own bed." He took the kettle off the fire.

" 'Ere, did I ever tell yer abaht w'en I went up the canal ter Manchester?" And without waiting for an answer, he carried on with the tale.

Two hours later Pitt was halfway through the next round of the upstairs rooms when he came to the end of the corridor and saw Sissons's office door ajar. He thought it had not been open the last time he was here. Had some worker been in there?

He pushed the door open, holding up his lantern. The room was wider than the others, and from seven storeys up in the very faint light of the false dawn he could see over the rooftops to the south, the silver reflection on the shining surface of the river.

He held his lantern high, turning around the room.

Sissons was sitting at his desk, slumped forward across its polished surface. There was a gun in his right hand, and there was a pool of blood on the wood and leather beneath him. But sharpest, glaring white in the lamplight that caught it, was a sheet of paper untouched by the blood, unstained. The inkwell was on the right of the desk towards the front, set in its own slightly sunken base, the quill resting in its stand, the knife beside it.

Cold, his stomach a little queasy, Pitt took the two steps over to Sissons, careful not to disturb anything, but he could see no footmarks on the bare floor, no drops of blood. He touched Sissons's cheek. It was almost cold. He must have been dead two or three hours.

He moved around the desk and read the note. It was written in a neat, slightly pedantic hand.

I have done all I can, and I have failed. I was warned, and I did not listen. In my foolishness I believed that a prince of the blood, heir to the throne of England, and so of a quarter of the world, would never betray his word. I lent him money, all I could scrape together, on a fixed term and at minimal interest. I believed that by so doing I could relieve a man of his financial embarrassment, and at the same time earn a little interest that I would be able to put back into my business, and benefit my workers.

How blind I was. He has denied the very existence of the loan, and I am finished. I shall lose the factories, and a thousand men will be out of work, and all those who depend upon them will perish likewise. It is my fault, for trusting a man not worthy of honor. I cannot live to see it happen; I cannot bear to watch it, or face the men I have destroyed.

I am taking the only course left to me. May God forgive me.

James Sissons

Beside it lay a note of debt for twenty thousand pounds, signed by the Prince of Wales. Pitt stared at them and they swam before his eyes. The room seemed to sway around him as if he were aboard a ship. He put his hands on the desk to steady himself. Sissons was beyond help. When the first clerk came in, when he was found, and the letter and note of debt with him, it would do more damage than half a dozen sticks of dynamite. An unrepaid loan to the Prince of Wales, for him to race horses, drink wine and give presents to his mistresses, while in Spitalfields fifteen hundred families went into beggary! Shops would close, tradesmen would go out of business, houses would be boarded up and people would live on the streets.

There would be riots that would make Bloody Sunday in Trafalgar Square look like a playground squabble. The whole of the East End of London would erupt.

And when Remus was given the last piece of evidence he needed to expose the Whitechapel murderer as in the service of the throne, no one would care whether the Queen or the Prince of Wales, or anyone else, had known of it or wished it; there would be revolution. The old order would be gone forever, replaced by rage, and then terror, and then unrelenting destruction, the good and the bad torn apart together.

Law would be the first to suffer, the law that oppressed and the law that protected equally, and finally all law, even that which governed conscience and the violence within.

He reached for the letter. If he tore it up, no one else would ever know. Then he noticed beside it a pattern of tiny splatters of ink with a large clear space in the center. It was a moment before he realized what it was; then he picked up the inkwell and placed it very carefully over the unmarked patch. It fit exactly. The inkwell normally sat to the left of Sissons! Had it been moved to make him seem right-handed?

Carefully he took the dead man's left hand and turned it over, gently touching the insides of the first and second fingers. He felt the ridge where Sissons normally held a pen. Why?

He had been shot in the right side of his head... and someone had realized too late that he was left-handed.

A murder made to look like suicide... but by whom? And who might lie and say Sissons was right-handed, or could use either hand?

He must make certain this was seen as the murder it was. If he got rid of the gun, dropped it in one of the sugar vats, there could be no denying it.

This half of the conspiracy could be stifled. Then even if Remus broke the other story, the rage here in Spitalfields would not erupt. There would be anger, but against Sissons, not against the throne.

Was that what he wanted? His hand stayed in the air, poised above the paper. If the Prince of Wales had borrowed money for his own extravagance and not repaid, even when it would bring ruin to thousands of people, then he deserved to be overthrown, stripped of his privileges and left as comparatively destitute as those in Spitalfields were now. Even if he became a fugitive, a refugee in another land, it was no worse than what happened to many. He would have to start again as a stranger, just as Isaac and Leah Karansky and tens of thousands like them had done. In the last analysis, all human life was equal.

What justice was there if Pitt concealed this monstrous selfishness, criminal irresponsibility, because the guilty man was the Prince of Wales? It made him party to the sin.

And if he did not, then countless people who had no say in it at all would be consumed by the violence which would follow, and the destruction which would leave poverty and waste behind it, perhaps for a generation.

His mind was in turmoil. Every belief he had lived by forbade he conceal the truth of the debt. Yet even as his thoughts raced, his hand closed over the paper. He crunched it up, then unfolded it and tore it across again and again until it was in tiny pieces. Not yet certain why, he put the note of debt far down inside his shirt, next to his body.

He was shivering, the sweat standing out cold on his skin. He had committed himself. There was no way to turn back.

If this had to be known as murder, then he must make it look like one. He had surely known enough murders to know what the police would look for. Sissons had been dead for at least two or three hours. There was no danger they would suspect him. Better it should be an impersonal robbery than hatred or revenge, which would indicate someone who knew him.

Was there money in the office? He should make it look as if it had been searched, at the very least. And quickly. He must not seem to have stood there debating what to do. An honest man would have raised the alarm immediately. He had already delayed almost too long. There was no time for indecision.

He pulled out the desk drawers and tipped them onto the floor, then the files. There was a little petty cash. He could not bring himself to take it. Instead he put it under one of the drawers and replaced it. It was not very satisfactory, but it would have to do.

He riffled quickly through other pieces of paper to see if there was anything else about the Prince's loan. They seemed to be all concerning the factory and its daily running, orders and receipts, a few letters of intent. Then one caught his eye because he knew the handwriting. Coldness filled him as he read it.

My dear friend,

It is a most noble sacrifice you are making for the cause. I cannot stress how much you are admired among your fellows. Your ruin at the hands of a certain person will set off a fire which will never be extinguished. The light of it will be seen all over Europe, and your name remembered with reverence as a hero of the people.

Long after the violence and the death are forgotten your memorial will be the peace and prosperity of those ordinary men and women who came after.

Yours with the utmost respect.

It was signed with a swirl of the pen which could have been anything. What flared in Pitt's brain like an explosion was the fact that the writer had known about Sissons's ruin, and very possibly even his death. The wording was ambiguous, but it seemed that was what it meant.

He must destroy it also, immediately. Already he could hear footsteps in the passage outside. He had been gone too long. Wally would be looking for him to make sure everything was all right.

He ripped the letter into pieces. There was no time to get rid of it, but at least it would be illegible. He would have to make an opportunity to put the remnants of both letters, and the gun, in one of the vats.

Even as he was moving towards the door he remembered where he had seen the handwriting. He stumbled and banged into the corner of the desk as the full import struck him. It had been during the investigation of Martin Fetters's death-it was John Adinett's hand!

He stood stock-still, dizzy for an instant, his leg throbbing where the desk corner had bruised it, but he was only dimly aware.

Wally's footsteps were almost at the door.

Adinett had known of the plan for Sissons's ruin, and had praised him for it! He was not a royalist, as they had presumed, but as far from it as possible. So why had he killed Martin Fetters?

The door opened and Wally peered around it, the lantern in his hand making his face look ghostly in the upward light.

"You all right, Tom?" he said anxiously.

"Sissons is dead," Pitt replied, startled by how hoarse his voice was, and that his hands were shaking. "Looks as if somebody shot him. I'm going to get the police. You stay here and make sure no one else comes in."

"Shot 'im!" Wally was stunned. "W'y?" He stared across at the figure slumped across the desk. "Gawd! Poor devil. Wot'll 'appen now?" There was fear in his voice and in his face, which was slack with shock and dismay.

Pitt was hideously conscious of the gun in his pocket and the torn-up pieces of the two letters.

"I don't know. But we'd better get the police quickly."

"They'll blame us!" Wally said, panic in his face.

"No, they won't!" Pitt denied, but the same thought was like a sick ache in the bottom of his stomach. "Anyway, we've got no choice." He moved past Wally and out of the door, carrying his own lantern high so he could see the way. He must find an unattended vat and get rid of the gun.

The first room he tried had a night worker in it who looked up without curiosity; so did the second. The third was unoccupied and he lifted the lid of the vat, smelling the thick liquid. The paper would not sink in it. He would have to stir it in, but he dared not be found with the pieces. They could still be placed together, with care. He put them on the surface and used the gun to move them around until they were lost, then he let the gun go and watched it sink slowly.

As soon as it was out of sight he went out into the corridor again and ran down the rest of the stairs and out into the yard. He went straight to the gates and down Brick Lane towards the Whitechapel High Street. The false dawn had widened across the sky, but it was still long before daylight. The lamps gleamed like dying moons along the curb edge and shone pale arcs on the wet cobbles.

He found the constable just around the corner.

"Eh, eh! Wot's the matter wi' you, then?" the constable asked, stepping in front of him. Pitt could only see the outline of him because they were between lampposts, but he was tall and seemed very solid in his cape and helmet. It was the first time in his life Pitt had been afraid of a policeman, and it was a cold, sick feeling, alien to all his nature.

"Mr. Sissons has been shot," he said, his breath rasping. "In his office, in the factory up Brick Lane."

"Shot?" the constable said unsteadily. "You sure? Is 'e 'urt bad?"

"He's dead."

The constable was stunned into a moment's silence, then he gathered his wits. "Then we'd better send ter the station an get Inspector 'Arper. 'Oo are you, an' 'ow'd yer come ter find Mr. Sissons? You the night watch, then?"

"Yes. Thomas Pitt. Wally Edwards is there with him now. He's the other night watchman."

"I see. D'yer know where the Whitechapel station is?"

"Yes. Do you want me to tell them?"

"Yes. You go an' tell ' em Constable Jenkins sent yer, an' tell 'em wot yer found at the factory. I'll be there. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Then 'urry."

Pitt obeyed, turning on his heel, then breaking into a run.

***

It was nearly an hour later when he was back at the sugar factory, not in Sissons's office but in one of the other fairly large rooms on the top floor. Inspector Harper was a very different man from Constable Jenkins, smaller with a blunt face and square chin. Jenkins was standing by the door, and Pitt and Wally were standing in the middle of the floor. It was now early daylight, gray through the dockland smoke, and the sun was silver on the stretches of the river below them in the distance.

"Right now, then... what's your name? Pitt!" Harper began. "You just tell me exactly what you saw an' what you did." He frowned. "And what were you doing in Mr. Sissons's office anyway? Not part of your duty to go in there, is it?"

"The door was open," Pitt replied. His hands were clammy, stiff. "It shouldn't be. I thought something might be wrong."

"All right, all right! So tell me what you saw, exactly!"

Pitt had prepared this very carefully, and he had said it all to the duty sergeant at the Whitechapel station already.

"Mr. Sissons was sitting at his desk, slumped over it, and there was a pool of blood, so I knew immediately he wasn't just asleep. Some of the desk drawers were half open. There was no one else in the room and the windows were closed."

"Why d'you say that? What difference does that make?" Harper challenged. "We're seven storeys up, man!"

Pitt felt himself flushing. He must not appear too quick. He was a night watchman, not a superintendent of police.

"None. Just noticed it, that's all."

"Did you touch anything?"

"No."

"Are you sure?" Harper looked at him narrowly.

"Yes, I'm sure."

Harper looked skeptical. "Well, he was shot with a handgun, pistol of sorts, so where is it?"

Pitt realized with a lurch that Harper was suggesting he had taken it. He could feel the guilt hot in his face. Suddenly he knew exactly how others had felt when he had questioned them, men perhaps innocent of the crime but with other desperate secrets to hide.

"I don't know," he said as steadily as he could. "I suppose whoever shot him took it when they went."

"And who could that be?" Harper asked, his eyes wide, pale blue. "Aren't you the night watch? Who came or went, then? Or are you saying it was one of the men who work here?"

"No!" Wally spoke for the first time. "Why'd any one o' us do that?"

"No reason at all, if you've any sense," Harper replied. "More like he shot himself, and Mr. Pitt here thought he'd take a little souvenir. Maybe sell it for a few shillings. Good gun, was it?"

Pitt looked up at him with amazement and met his gaze squarely. It was that instant he realized with horror that crawled over his skin that Harper had known what he was going to find. Harper was Inner Circle, and he intended it to be suicide. Pitt's throat was tight, his mouth dry.

Harper smiled. He was master and he knew it.

Jenkins shifted his feet unhappily. "We got no evidence o' that, sir."

"Got no evidence against it either!" Harper said sharply, without moving his eyes from Pitt's. "We'll have to see what turns up when we look into Mr. Sissons's affairs, won't we?"

Wally shook his head. "Yer got no reason ter say as Tom took the gun, an' that's a fact." His voice shook with fear, but his face was stubborn. "And any'ow, Mr. Sissons never shot 'isself, 'cos I seen the body. 'E were shot in the right side of 'is 'ead, like 'e were right-'anded, which 'e were! 'Ceptin' 'is right fingers was broke an' the wotsits cut, so 'e couldn't curl up 'is fingers... so 'e couldn't 'a pulled a gun tight ter shoot it. Doctors wot looks at 'im'll tell yer that."

Harper was confused and angry. He turned to Jenkins and met a blank stare of dumb insolence and immovability.

"Well, then," he said angrily, looking away. "I suppose we'd better find out who sneaked in past our two diligent night watchmen... and murdered their employer. Hadn't we?"

"Yes sir!" he responded.

Harper spent the rest of the morning questioning not only Wally and Pitt as to every detail of their watch, but also all the night staff and many of the clerks who came in to start the day.

Pitt did not tell him about the man he had seen leaving. At first he kept silent more from instinct than thought-out reason. It was not something he could have imagined doing twenty-four hours ago, but now he was in a new world, and he realized with incredulity that for weeks now he had been growing closer to people like Wally Edwards, Saul, Isaac Karansky, and the other ordinary men and women of Spitalfields who were distrustful of the law, which had seldom protected them and which had never caught the Whitechapel murderer. He believed what Tellman had told him about that investigation, about Abberline, even about Commissioner Warren. The tentacles of that conspiracy reached right up to the throne itself.

But it was not the same conspiracy as that which had murdered James Sissons and made it look like suicide, or was feeding Lyndon Remus with information which when complete would expose the greatest scandal in royal history and bring down the government and the crown with it.

And Harper was part of that second conspiracy; Pitt was certain of that. Therefore he could tell him nothing he did not have to.

Second to that, and coming to his realization a moment later, was that the description he could give could fit easily many people he knew: Saul, or Isaac, or a score of other older men. And perhaps Harper would like nothing better than to use that excuse to whip up anti-Semitic feeling. It would suit his purposes very well to blame the Jews for the ruin of the sugar factory. It was not as good as blaming the Prince of Wales, but it was better than nothing.

And so it turned out. By midday, when Pitt was allowed to leave, Harper had suggested, and then paraphrased, answers until he had a definite intruder observed by three different night workers: a thin, dark man of Jewish appearance, carrying something in his hand on which the light gleamed, like the barrel of a gun. He had crept up the stairs, soft-footed, and some little time later crept down again and disappeared into the night.

Pitt left feeling sick and miserable, and more helpless than ever in his life. His concept of the law and all his beliefs were shifted into a new and ugly pattern. He had seen corruption before, but it had been individual, born of greed or weakness exploited, never a cancer that spread silent and unseen throughout the entire body of those who created the law and admonished it, even those who judged it. There was no recourse, no one left to whom the hunted or injured could appeal.

As he walked along Brick Lane up towards Heneagle Street he found himself genuinely and deeply afraid. It was the first time he had felt this way since he was a child and his father had been taken away, and the realization had come that there was no justice to save him, no one who could help. They would never meet again, and he was helpless to make any difference to it.

He had forgotten how terrible that feeling was, the bitterness of disillusion, the loneliness of understanding that this was the end of this particular path. There was nothing beyond except what he himself could create.

But he was a man now, not a child. He could and would effect it! He changed direction and increased his pace towards Lake Street. If Narraway was not in, he would demand that the cobbler send for him. At least he would find out which side Narraway was on, force him to show himself. He had very little to lose, and if Remus succeeded, then nobody would have.

He crossed the street and passed a newsboy shouting the headlines. In the House of Commons, Mr. McCartney had asked whether the conflict between political parties in Ireland would be such as to prevent peaceable citizens from voting. Would protection be provided for them?

In Paris, the anarchist Ravachol had been found guilty and sentenced to death.

In America, Mr. Grover Cleveland had been nominated as the Democratic candidate for the presidency.

As he reached Lake Street he passed another newsboy, this one holding a placard saying that James Sissons had been murdered in a conspiracy to ruin Spitalfields, and the police already had witnesses who had seen a dark-haired man of foreign appearance on the premises, and were now looking to identify him. The word Jew had not been used, but it might as well have been.

Pitt reached the cobbler's shop and left a message that he required to speak to Narraway immediately. He was told to return in thirty minutes.

When he did, Narraway was waiting for him. He was not sitting in his usual position, but standing in the tiny room as if he had expected Pitt to the minute and was too restless to make even the smallest concession to the idea that things were as usual.

"Well?" he demanded as soon as the door was closed.

Now that it was the moment, suddenly Pitt was undecided. His hands were clammy, his heart knocking in his chest. Narraway's eyes seemed to be boring into his mind, and he still had no idea whether to trust him or not.

"You wanted something, Pitt! What is it?" Narraway's voice was hard-edged. Was he afraid too? He must have heard of Sissons's murder, and he would understand all its implications. Even if he were Inner Circle, riot was not what he wanted. But there was nowhere else to turn. A phrase came into Pitt's mind: if you would sup with the devil, you must have a long spoon. He thought of the five women in Whitechapel, and the coach that had gone around at night, looking for them to butcher. Was it really better than riot, even revolution?

"For God's sake, man!" Narraway exploded, his eyes dark and brilliant, his face bleached of color with exhaustion. "If you've got something to say, say it! Don't waste my time!"

This time there was no mistaking his fear. It was under the surface, but Pitt could feel it like electricity crawling over the skin.

"Sissons wasn't murdered the way the police suppose," he said, committing himself. There was no going back now. "I was the one who found him, and when I did it looked like suicide. The gun was there in his right hand, along with a letter saying that he had killed himself because he was ruined over a loan he had made and which was now denied."

"I see. And what has happened to this note?" Narraway's voice was soft now, almost expressionless.

Pitt felt his stomach lurch.

"I destroyed it." He swallowed. "I also got rid of the gun." He was not going to mention Adinett's letter or the note of debt.

"Why?" Narraway said softly.

"Because the loan was to the Prince of Wales," Pitt replied.

"Yes... I do see." Narraway rubbed his hands over his brow, pushing his hair back into spikes. In that single gesture was a weariness and a depth of understanding that dispelled the outer shell of Pitt's fear. It was peculiarly naked, as if at last it had exposed something of the real man.

Narraway sat down and gestured to the other chair. "So what is this about a Jew being seen leaving the factory?"

Pitt smiled wryly. "Inspector Harper's attempt to find an acceptable scapegoat-not as good as the Prince of Wales."

Narraway looked up sharply. "As good?"

There was no going back, no safety left. "For his purposes," Pitt replied. "Harper is Inner Circle. He was expecting Sissons's death. He was dressed and waiting to be called. He tried to say it was suicide and blame me for stealing the gun. He might have succeeded if Wally Edwards hadn't stood up to him-and Constable Jenkins as well. It was Wally who said Sissons couldn't have shot himself because of an old injury; he didn't have the use of his right fingers."

"I see." Narraway's voice was bitter. "And do I assume from this that you now trust me? Or are you sufficiently desperate that you have no choice?"

Pitt would not add to his lies. And perhaps Narraway deserved better, either way. "I don't think you want the East End in flames any more than I do. And yes, I am desperate."

A black humor showed briefly in Narraway's eyes. "Should I thank you for at least that much?"

Pitt would have liked to tell him about the Whitechapel murders and what Remus knew, but that was taking trust too far, and once said it could not be taken back. He shrugged very slightly and made no reply.

"Can you see the police don't blame some innocent person?" he said instead.

Narraway gave a short bark of laughter, bitter and derisive.

"No... I can't! I can't stop this lot from blaming Sissons's death on some poor Jew, if that's what they think will get them out of more trouble." He bit his lip hard, till the pain showed in his face. "But I'll try. Now get out of here and do what you can yourself. And Pitt!"

"Yes?"

"Don't go telling anyone what you did-no matter who they arrest. They won't believe you anyway. You'll only make it worse. This has nothing to do with truth. It's about hunger and fear, and guarding your own when you have too little to share."

"I know," Pitt agreed. It was also about power and political ambition, but he did not add that. If Narraway did not know, this was not the time to tell him; if he did, it was unnecessary. He went out without saying anything more.