Authors: Sara Sheridan
‘Lindon’s room was upstairs. Top floor,’ said Charlie.
The smell of cats was overpowering. Pooch gave a halfhearted bark as they climbed upwards. At the top of the stairs, the combed ceiling made it difficult for Charlie and Harry to stand upright. The wallpaper hung in tattered strips. There were three doors, side by side.
Charlie indicated the one at the end. ‘It had two windows because it was on the corner. Lindon liked that.’
He jemmied the lock with the aid of one of Mirabelle’s few remaining hairpins. The door swung open to reveal a room so tiny that the four of them could only just fit in together. On the floor was a bare mattress. Some sheet music was laid neatly on a makeshift table and beside that a cracked washstand. Next to the fireplace there was a coin-operated electricity meter and a rickety chair serving as a clothes horse. A few pairs of Lindon’s socks were hung over it to dry. A couple of morning rolls had grown stale on the mantelpiece, beside a small glass bottle of lumpy milk. Vesta put her hand to her mouth. Pooch settled on the floorboards and rested her head on her paws. They all waited as Charlie crouched down to fiddle with the meter and a harsh yellow light snapped on.
‘That’s better.’ Mirabelle stood directly under the bulb and examined the street guide. ‘Are you all right, Vesta?’ she asked.
Charlie laid a comforting hand on Vesta’s shoulder.
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘We’ll do our best for Lindon, I promise. So this is our starting point. We work outwards from here. What time is it?’
Harry moved under the light and held up his watch.
‘Is that a Rolex?’ Charlie asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Time! What’s the time?’ Mirabelle insisted.
‘Almost ten past midnight,’ Harry confirmed.
‘Good. We need to cover about half a mile in each direction, thoroughly. From here, east as far as London Spa at least. Going north, about half a mile beyond The Angel. To King’s Cross going south – which is more than half a mile, but there are a lot of potential buildings down there, garages, small warehouses and such like. I think we should go the extra ten minutes.’ She held the map up so everyone could see. ‘We’ll make our way along each street, fan out as we go and check whatever we can.’
‘I don’t know this area at all,’ Harry admitted.
‘It’s pretty rough,’ Charlie confirmed. ‘A few of the boys live in this neighbourhood. I heard some stories. We better be careful.’
‘Do you think we’ll be safe?’ Vesta asked.
‘We’ll be fine, sugar. Don’t worry. I just don’t think we should split up, is all.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mirabelle. ‘It’ll take us longer but it’ll be safer, and Pooch might pick up something we can’t.’
The streets were so quiet that on occasion they could make out owls hooting in the nearby squares. This had once been a beautiful, rather grand area, Mirabelle realised, and felt a pang of sadness. They decided to start towards the south and made for King’s Cross Road, checking the byways to either side one after the other. There were numerous dead ends. Outside a grimy tenement on Lloyd Baker Street Pooch stopped and barked, but it soon transpired that there was a fox lurking around some rubbish bins.
On Farringdon Street, closer to the station, they passed a brothel in the doorway of which a couple of morose-looking girls leaned. Occasionally a line of garages or commercial premises ran off the main road and there was a flurry of excitement in the group. These kinds of properties were the most likely hiding place.
‘Really,’ Harry said in an exasperated tone, ‘she could be anywhere.’
Mirabelle said, ‘I know, but we have to try.’
‘I don’t understand what we’re trying though,’ Harry hissed. ‘We’re just wandering about. Rose could be in this building or that one or that one over there. We can’t check people’s houses. All these flats and bedsits – there are thousands of them.’
‘Yes, she could be anywhere. You’re right. We might even have passed her by. We might never find her. We’re just hoping to get lucky, Harry. If we get lucky and we find Rose, we lower the risk of Blyth killing her tomorrow rather than handing her back. That’s what you want, isn’t it – to lower the risk? I mean, for the time it’s taking, I’d say it’s worth it.’
‘Of course,’ Harry mumbled. ‘Sorry.’
Close to King’s Cross the streets grew busier. The group excited a few ‘Good evening’s from passers-by now and then. At the station they bought cups of tea and bacon rolls from an all-night stand. Pooch perked up when Harry flung two sausages her way and the men smoked cigarettes to warm up, waiting for Vesta and Mirabelle to use the station’s lavatories. Then they decided to turn back and make their way to Lindon’s bedsit from the west.
‘Clerk-en-well.’ Charlie sounded out the word phonetically.
‘Clerkenwell.’ Vesta corrected his pronouncation with her clipped vowels.
Some time after two, sustained only by the rapidly decreasing contents of Harry’s hip flask, they came across a makeshift shed on a bomb site near Cruikshank Street. It was their most promising find so far. Harry sneaked across the rough ground and peered through the small window.
‘There’s someone inside,’ he hissed. ‘Rose,’ he called gently.
‘God, it’s freezing here. She could die of hypothermia. Rose.’ Charlie opened the door, which was unlocked. Inside, he put his hand on the shoulder of the sleeping figure who snapped upwards instantly, growling, with a makeshift knife in his hand.
‘Whoa! Take it easy, brother,’ Charlie insisted as the old man lashed out weakly without fully rising from his bed.
‘We’re looking for a girl,’ he explained. ‘Do you know of any girls around here? Kept somewhere?’
‘You sick or something? The whores down by the station not good enough for you, nigger?’ the tramp spat.
‘This girl is missing, man. Take it easy. She’s a white girl being held somewhere. You know anything about that?’
The tramp focused on the figures crowding the doorway to his shed. ‘What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?’ He began to laugh. ‘Are you vigilantes? D’you want to kill me, do you? I’ve got nothing now. Not nothing. I was a soldier. I fought for this bloody country! I don’t care any more. I don’t care what you do!’
They moved on to The Angel where they spent a fruitless hour checking premises alongside the canal. Sleek water rats scuttled out of cracks in the brickwork and slipped into the dark water, and Pooch had to be restrained from diving after them.
By half past three they were heading east. The dog was exhausted. She kept stopping, and Vesta had to haul her along on a taut lead until at last Pooch simply sat down on Rawstorne Street and refused to move.
Harry gathered her into his arms. ‘She’s bloody heavy!’ he complained. ‘I can’t believe I bought you sausages, you fatty. Mirabelle, do you think we should jump ship?’
‘We haven’t finished yet, so no, I don’t,’ Mirabelle replied abruptly.
Charlie curled an arm around Vesta’s shoulder. She was starting to flag, too. He was impressed by how methodical she’d been all night. It was Vesta who checked in the corners, Vesta who consulted Mirabelle at the perimeters of the search to figure out if it was worth extending another street or two. They hadn’t missed a square inch of the territory.
‘Perhaps,’ Vesta said, ‘we should go back and leave Pooch in the car.’
As they wandered towards the car they could see signs of life. The day started early on this side of town. Near London Spa on Tysoe Street a market was setting up. Harry put Pooch down on the ground, grateful for a rest. The dog sniffed with renewed interest. The marketplace was a haphazard affair, as if entirely by chance people had brought boxes and baskets of random bric-à-brac and home produce. Shadowy figures were unloading goods from vans parked on side-streets, and as the men passed Harry’s Aston they stopped and stared, not quite believing their eyes.
A couple of younger fellows were peering through the driver’s window as Harry strode towards the car. One of them kicked a tyre.
‘Hey!’ Harry shouted. The men moved on reluctantly.
‘All this stuff is nicked, isn’t it?’ Vesta grinned.
It was still well over an hour before dawn would break. Gradually, as if some tide had washed it all up, the pavement was covered with radio parts and old candlesticks, leather belts, nylon stockings and tins of biscuits. A black-and-white television took pride of place next to a rusty bicycle. Two young boys laid out a selection of watches on a thick piece of sacking. A woman sat on a bollard on the street corner with two baskets of jam jars – gin on one side and old-fashioned moonshine on the other. From her pocket a sheaf of ration books protruded. Slowly but surely people appeared from nowhere on bikes, on foot and by car, dressed in shabby coats and scuffed shoes. They perused the stalls with hushed voices, exchanging money for goods almost by sleight-of-hand. There were over a hundred people now thronging the square, but, unlike most markets where the stallholders shouted about their wares, here the transactions took place in near-silence.
‘What d’you want, darkie?’ An old man squared up to Charlie.
‘He’s with me,’ Harry stepped in. ‘We’re looking for someone.’
‘You won’t find none of your mates round here,’ the old man sneered. ‘This is a respectable neighbourhood!’
The men were distracted by the sound of Pooch barking further up the road. Vesta and Mirabelle were at the far end of the square where tinned goods and butcher’s meat wrapped in paper parcels were being sold from the back of a van.
‘Shush, Pooch,’ said Vesta.
The parcels, she supposed, must contain black-market cuts. Pooch yelped as Vesta tried to drag her away.
‘Let’s go for a walk around the square,’ Mirabelle suggested.
‘At least it’ll distract her.’
‘She can’t be hungry,’ Vesta said.
Pooch resisted and strained at the leash, trying desperately to get back to the butcher’s van, but Vesta tutted loudly and left no slack on the lead.
‘You need to be strict with dogs, don’t you? I think this one might have had it too easy. I thought the upper classes trained their animals! Looks like we’re going to have no luck tonight,’ she sighed. ‘And tomorrow, gosh, not even tomorrow,
today
we have to get back to work. Brighton seems a long way away.’
‘Rose has to be around here somewhere.’ Mirabelle looked upwards. The windows around the square were dark. Pooch continued to bark loudly.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Vesta. Harry and Charlie caught them up.
‘There’s a guy with three big copper pans back there. Good ones, too. He can only have got them from a proper kitchen,’ announced Charlie. ‘I asked him the price but he said to make an offer.’
‘Do you want copper pans?’ said Vesta.
‘Hell, I might as well get something after being up all night.’
A pale yellow light seeped through the fanlight at number seventeen. Harry lit a cigarette and offered the last of his packet to the others as a man opened the front door. Pooch jumped up, almost knocking the lighter out of Harry’s hand.
‘Pooch! Get down!’ Vesta snapped. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Harry took a deep reflective draw on his cigarette and began to walk towards the black door as the fanlight darkened again.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘Do you think she’s in there? Bring Pooch! Come on, girl! Is this what you’re excited about?’
But as he turned he saw Mirabelle heading in the opposite direction towards the market. She had fallen into step behind the man who’d just walked out of number seventeen. He was on the pavement furthest away from the stalls. He didn’t so much as cast a glance at the market.
‘He’s not scruffy enough,’ Vesta murmured as it dawned on her. ‘Look at his shoes. They’re expensive.’
The man drew keys from his pocket and unlocked a small van with blacked-out windows. It was parked directly opposite the butcher’s van. He fired the ignition and as the headlamps came on the two stallholders at the end of the street put their hands to their eyes.
‘Oy, mate! We can’t see!’ one of them shouted.
Vesta gave Pooch her head and the spaniel, suddenly all muscular energy, tore off in Mirabelle’s wake.
‘Excuse me?’ Mirabelle peered in the driver’s window and knocked.
The man ignored her. Pooch launched herself at the rear doors as the van pulled into the street. Mirabelle tried to catch the handles as they passed but Pooch jumped up once more and knocked away her hand. Pooch was now racing alongside the vehicle as it headed for Merlin Street.
‘Harry!’ Mirabelle called as she ran towards the Aston.
‘The keys!’
Harry fumbled in his pocket. ‘Oh God,’ he cursed as Mirabelle opened the passenger door and jumped into the car.
He threw himself into the driver’s seat and the Aston’s engine roared to life.
In the rear-view mirror Mirabelle could see Pooch barking on the pavement and Vesta and Charlie trying to catch her as Harry’s car screeched off, tyres smoking. Harry was chewing his lip, focused completely on the road. At the end of Merlin Street they looked frantically left and right. In the darkness they caught a glimmer of light on the road heading towards Skinner Street.