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‘Shandy it is!’

He marched off across a perfectly flat floor, somehow making it look like he was going uphill. I tried to stop him but I couldn’t because Walt – great lad, Walt – was shouting something in my ear. He’d probably been doing that for a while.

‘I heard there were six of them that did it. Ripped off his arms and legs, like a spider, and pissed in his helmet. Took turns.’

‘Eight legs on a spider,’ said Derek knowledgeably.

I shook my head. ‘That’s not right. There were three of them who did it. And they slit his throat.’

‘They’ve shown their true colours, they have,’ said Walt, ignoring me. ‘Killing coppers, pissing in their helmets … Imagine if we did a thing like that!’

‘We’d never hear the end of it.’

‘If I got my hands on that fucking Pankhurst –’

‘I met her today,’ I said, but no one was listening to me. The conversation was carrying on past me like a landslide.

‘How can we give them the vote, if that’s what they do with it?’

‘They’re hysterical, that’s the problem.’

‘That’s right. Gossips, too.’

I picked up one of my pints – I had some headway to make before my shandy turned up – and saw that there was now another little glass next to it. Someone had just bought me a port. I was now in four rounds.

‘Listen to them.’

I turned my head, which felt like it took a week, and saw that Peter was slumped beside me. I had no idea how long he’d been there. I thought I was sitting next to Walt. He was gazing blearily at the footmen as they squabbled and slurred and argued in front of us.

‘A whole stratum of society, kept under the foot of a ruling class, and all they care about is one dead copper.’ He took an angry swig from his glass. There was a film on his top lip, the kind you get from angry swigging. ‘It’s all a distraction. Votes for women. Don’t make me laugh. Well-to-do women only, that means. That’s what I always said to Eva, not that she ever listened to anything I said.’

I blinked, trying to make my brain stay on top of the conversation. ‘Who’s Eva?’

Peter leant against me so he could shout in my ear. ‘Give property-owning women the vote, and how do you think they’re going to vote? All that bill’s going to do is create one million more Conservative voters. What about extending the vote to all men over the age of twenty-one, property or none, eh?’ He jabbed a finger into my ribs. ‘Your voice would count for something then. Mine, too. But they won’t do that, will they, because that would mean a working-class majority. It’s posh women over working-class men, that’s all this is.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘That’s why we’ve got to look after each other, Stephen. We can’t rely on the government or the police to take care of us. Take it from me – they’re as bent as the rest of them.’

A little voice inside my head said, he doesn’t like the police.

I snapped awake. I was supposed to be finding out as much about Peter as I could, and now was my chance, if I could only think straight. I gulped down my drink. I had to get him talking. ‘Don’t get me started on coppers. I’ve been arrested, you know.’

Peter snorted. ‘Bollocks you have.’

I nodded. ‘GBH! Two years in Borstal.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Blimey. You don’t seem like the type.’

‘Yeah, everyone says that.’

Peter clinked his glass with me. ‘Well! You’re a man of many surprises, Stephen.’ He swigged his drink. ‘I got up to a fair amount in my youth, you know.’

My ears pricked up. ‘Like what?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ he muttered. ‘I keep that under wraps, Stephen, my lad. You know who I work for? Chief Constable Cartwright of the Metropolitan Police. If he found out what I’d been up to, I’d be out of a job!’

‘Ha, ha, yeah,’ I said. ‘But maybe you should just tell me anyway.’

I felt rotten, truth be told. Peter was a great lad. And here I was, trying to pin him down for murder. It didn’t matter, because Peter hadn’t heard me. ‘You know the kinds of things I overhear in that house, Stephen? They’d turn your blood.’ He leant in close, his eyes all wine-bright beneath the gas lamps. ‘You know that policeman who got killed? Watts? Cartwright’s been talking about him for weeks. He was one of the first policemen on site during that whole Crace thing.’

I had to stop for a moment and let my brain catch up. ‘Hang on – Sir William Crace? That MP whose house blew up?’