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sober in demeanor.
    “Linwood, sir,” he said stiffly. “You wanted to see me?”
    Pitt straightened up. “Yes, Sergeant. Were you the first into this room when we broke in?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Describe what you saw, exactly.”
    Linwood concentrated, looking down at the floor. “There were three men in here, sir. One was standing in the far corner, with a gun in his arms, a rifle. He had gingery hair. He was looking straight at me, but not holding the gun to fire. I reckon it could have been empty by then. They’d shot plenty out of the window.”
    That sounded like Carmody, from the description. “Who else?” Pitt asked.
    “Dark man, lots of hair,” Linwood said, screwing up his face in concentration. “He looked pretty shocked. Standing just about there.” He pointed to a place less than a yard from where Pitt was.
    “Beside the body on the floor!” Pitt said in surprise.
    Linwood’s eyes opened wide. “Yes, sir. He had a gun, but he couldn’t have shot him. The bullets had to have come from over there.” He indicated the door at the farther end of the room, going towards the stair to the back, down which the police had pursued the man who had shot Landsborough, and presumably escaped.
    “What else?” Pitt asked.
    “The dead man on the floor,” Linwood answered.
    “You’re sure? How was he lying—exactly?”
    “Just as you found him, sir. That shot killed him outright. Blew his brains out, poor devil.”
    Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Poor?” he questioned.
    Linwood’s mouth curled down. “I pity any man shot by his own, sir, whatever he believed in. Betrayal turns my stomach.”
    “Mine too,” Pitt agreed. “Are you sure that’s what it was?”
    “I don’t see what else it could have been, sir.” Linwood stared straight back at him. “I heard a shot when I was at the bottom of the stairs. Ask Patterson; he was straight behind me, and Gibbons behind him.”
    “And Welling and Carmody were standing where you said?”
    “Yes. So either one of them shot him, and the other is lying to protect him, or it was one of the ones who escaped,” Linwood replied. “Any way you look at it, it was one of his own.”
    “Yes,” Pitt agreed grimly. “Welling says it was us.”
    “He’s a liar.”
    “Not someone in uniform.”
    “We were all in uniform, sir,” Linwood said stiffly. “The only ones in plainclothes were you and your boss from Special Branch.”
    “I don’t think Welling was lying,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “I think it was someone he didn’t know, or didn’t recognize.”
    “Still one of his own,” Linwood’s face was hard, anger making his voice cutting. “He was shot in the back.”
    “I know. Looks as if anarchy’s an even uglier business than we thought. Thank you, Sergeant.”
    “Yes, sir. Is that all?” Linwood stood to attention, or close to it. He did not consider Special Branch to be real police.
    “For the moment,” Pitt replied.
    Linwood left, but Pitt stood still in the room, picturing in his mind the sequence of events. He had come up the stairs behind Narraway and the three policemen. He had been one flight up when he had heard the shot from the room above, and the shouting.
    When he had got there, seconds after the police, they had been standing still to this side of the gunman. The far door had been swinging. Someone else had just gone out of it. No one had mentioned seeing him, so he must already have disappeared when the first man came in at the front.
    Welling and Carmody were refusing to name anyone else, but they insisted the police had shot Magnus Landsborough. From the angle of the bullet and the way Landsborough was lying, the shot had to have come from the door to the back stairs. Presumably the man had escaped that way, Welling and Carmody assuming him to be police, and the police at the back mistaking him for one of the police with Special Branch from the front, in hot pursuit of an anarchist. They must have let him go right past