Billie cut in before he got too carried away with his nostalgia. “I wonder, would you happen to have any old newspapers out the back? I’m packing up, you see. If you don’t need them anymore, I mean. I would be most grateful.”
He peered at her. “Moving into the area?” he asked, a touch puzzled. Admittedly she wasn’t dressed for packing up a house.
“I’m helping a friend, actually,” she responded, lies falling easily from her lips. She could lie about unimportant things, she’d found. That kind of creativity was second nature. Good for the work. She took a sip of her cool soda and again flashed that winning professional smile she’d learned to use years ago.
“Well,” he said, “we have some out the back. You’re welcome to them, though they might have got a bit damp in the rain last night.” He came around the bar and led her to a back door, on the other side of which were heaped boxes, cartons, and a messy pile of newspapers, perhaps two weeks’ worth.
“Thank you, that will help a lot,” Billie said, and sincerely hoped that would be the case. Checking through the papers would be nocup of tea, but it was worth a shot if what Adin had got steamed up about proved to be relevant. There were worse things than pawing through damp paper.
“Okay, pretty lady. You’re welcome to them.”
He gave her three brown paper bags to carry them in, then excused himself as the bell tinkled and a customer entered the shop. Billie searched through the papers for those dated from Tuesday the previous week, grabbing about a week’s worth in case Maurice was wrong about it being the Thursday, and shoved them into the bags, bundling them to her chest so the papers wouldn’t fall out the bottom. She called her thanks to the proprietor, then bobbed and weaved her way around the children still playing on the footpath and made for the tram.
Three
“How did you find out?”
He opened his eyes—at least he thought they were open, but they felt hot and swollen, his eyelids not moving as eyelids normally did, but staying in place, barely lifting despite the urgings of his throbbing brain. He could hardly see, making out only movement and darkness, but he recalled a smile as thin as a knife blade. The smile that went with that voice.
“Who else knows?” the voice came again, heavily accented and menacing.
The voice hit him like a slap with every question, “Who—else—knows?”repeating the words with cold, firm precision so close to his ear that his brain seemed to throb with each syllable. He recoiled from the sound each time, pushing back against the creaking chair to which he was tied, until it started to tip backward and an unseen set of hands put it straight again. In a moment of blissful silence, a pause between the words, the sound of something like a whimper came to his ears, and it took a moment to realize that it was comingfrom his own throat. His stomach ached as if he’d been trodden on, and though he recalled being hit, he could not precisely remember where it had happened or how much time had passed. He knew he’d been in the boot of a motorcar. But when?
Head shaking back and forth, he tried to respond. “I did not tell... I did not...”
“I grow bored,” the voice said, again so close to his ear it felt like a painful touch, and following it came the pressure again, as something, a finger or something colder, pressed into his temple where he’d been injured. Harder, ever harder.
He screamed.
Four
Billie took the small elevatorup to the second floor of Cliffside Flats, her home in the leafy suburb of Edgecliff, leaning against her door to balance the bags of newspapers while she fiddled with her keys. Once inside her flat, she dropped the bags to the floor with a sigh of relief and rubbed her aching biceps. She couldn’t wait till the blasted petrol rationing was lifted. Her perfectly lovely car was sitting unused in the garage at the base of the building. What a crying shame that was. She hung her trench coat on the hallstand, slipped off her shoes, and noted with a vague sense of fatigue that the big toe on her right foot had begun to push through her stocking.
Blast.
She also noticed a piece of paper, neatly folded down the middle, that must have been slid under her door. She reached down and took it.
I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU.
Billie recognized the handwriting as that of one of her valued informants, Shyla. She had an idea of what the note was about, and on that line of inquiry she’d so far come up empty-handed. Instinctively she reopened the door, looked down the hallway in both directions, and closed it again, disappointed. Shyla had not waited around. The problem was, this particular informant couldn’t be reached through the telephone exchange, didn’t have a card or address of employment that she’d chosen to share with Billie, and had not divulged her personal address. Shyla would reach her again when Shyla was ready, Billie supposed.
Billie padded over to her small kitchen, filled the kettle, struck a match, and lit the stove. Tea would help. Tea always helped.
What was it that enraged Adin? And is it relevant?If there was a page missing from that stack of newspapers, she’d have a pretty good idea, she hoped.
She slid her hatpins out and took off her tilt hat, ruffling her hair. Lost in her thoughts about her new case, Billie absentmindedly removed her ivory blouse, then reached down and undid the smooth button of her skirt and the three little snaps disguised in the fold of the fabric beneath it, slid off her skirt, then sat down to unclip her right stocking. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. So many damned clips, but she supposed the things wouldn’t stay on straight otherwise. She carefully rolled the damaged nylon down, undid the ties on the thigh holster for her Colt, and placed the whole thing, little gun and all, gently on the tabletop. Then she undid the left garter clips. One. Two. Three...
Mrs. Brown’s son is certainly missing and she’s certainly distressed about it. That much rings true. But why is he missing? Is there a clue she’s leaving out?Billie sensed there was some element Mrs. Brown waswithholding. If so, she wouldn’t be the first. In the initial meeting, clients often held on to information they perceived to be sensitive or embarrassing. But if this case was anything like previous cases, the truth would out. Often the information would have been helpful to Billie’s work if offered at the start, but she knew a bit about human nature and it was not human nature to pour out every bit of detail to a stranger—not unless you thought you’d never see them again. It had been that way during the war: The nearness of death and the constant movement of anxious people far from home could make any meeting an intense and intimate confessional. But once everyone returned to the places they knew and had come from, they tried to make nice and to get on with their mouths shut. There was still gossip, lives were still complicated, but details weren’t offered up as easily, not without the lubrication of liquor. It might be something as simple as a now-regretted argument that had triggered Adin’s departure, or something unsavory the boy was into that wouldn’t reflect well on the family. Or something about the family itself, Billie mused. But there was something, the little woman in her gut told her, some key detail left out. Perhaps a second meeting might see Mrs. Brown more forthcoming. Perhaps her husband would be able to shed more light on the case.
Billie took her tea strong and black, and as the leaves steeped, she gave her other stocking a brief examination and decided it was not in need of mending. Once she had a steaming cup in hand, she made her way toward the front of the flat in her slip, her damaged stocking over her shoulder, and took her place behind a small table in the corner nook. This was the spot with good light. The curtains were open, but there was nothing but the tops of trees to witness her semi-undressed state or the lithe figure it revealed. It was close tosunset now, and the evening sun was pouring in across the woodwork, the spools, the sewing machine, the pincushion, turning everything a lovely rose gold. A rainbow of threads was propped neatly on the little wooden spikes of a rack mounted on the wall behind her. The traffic from the street below seemed distant, as so many tired men returned from work in the city to so many bored wives at home grappling with a changed world after a war that had bid so aggressively, so openly, for their involvement, only to ask them now to return to domestic service behind closed doors.
Certainly there are many Mrs. Browns, but she doesn’t look like one, Billie thought, despite the decidedly brown theme of her client’s clothes. The name was English, and common. But Billie’s new client did not have an English accent. She wondered why it niggled, if it mattered.
Billie pulled her wooden egg-shaped mold from a drawer, ran her fingers over it to check its smoothness, and pulled the foot of her stocking over it. Damned holes. She’d been fortunate enough not to have to go without stockings for too long, but now that nylon stockings were in supply again she’d be damned if she’d let that little hole get any larger. Expensive things, stockings. Damned expensive. And while there’d been plenty of men happy to give them to her, she wasn’t happy with their romantic price. As with everything else, she’d buy her own, thank you very much. What a client wanted for his pound was sometimes pretty steep in her business, but what men expected for nylons was something else entirely. She found a fairly well-matched thread in tan, threaded her darning needle, and began to close the small hole. The sun was lower by the time she was finished. Night was coming and her telephone was due to ring.
It was only one minute past eight when it rang. That would beSam checking in, right on time. He was to call the office, letting it ring, and if she didn’t pick up he was to try her flat. She put down her satisfactorily mended stocking and strode to her black telephone.
“Ms. Walker. What’s doing?”
