‘I’m looking for Reynolds, from the island,’ Cook said.
The boy didn’t answer. He seemed to be thinking.
‘Call it a shilling,’ he said, eventually.
Cook reached into his pocket and came up with half a crown. He tossed it to the boy.
The boy whistled, and one of his mates shuffled forward. They conferred.
‘Ronnie’s going to take you,’ the boy said. ‘But not all the way. Reynolds and that lot don’t mess about.’
From where they stood on the turntable, some spokes were more inviting than others. Laughter, flickering light, and the smells of hundreds of dinners being prepared and eaten – all these things converged at the hub. But one spoke gave out none of these signs of human warmth. The arched entrance was a dark hole, a blankness that repelled the eye. Move on, it said, choose one of the other options. Nothing good this way. Cook didn’t need a guide to tell him which spoke was the one he sought.
Cook’s designated helper stood at the entrance to the tunnel and looked up at him.
‘You sure about this, guv?’ he asked.
‘What’s the worst thing could happen?’ Cook asked.
‘You could get killed,’ the boy said, his matter-of-fact tone at odds with his age.
Cook listened to the sirens, and the distant crump of another bomb landing. Another small corner of the city turned to rubble.
‘We’re all going to get killed,’ Cook said.
‘You’re a barrel of laughs, ain’t you?’ the boy said. He winked at Cook. ‘Come on then, if you’re so eager to get it over with.’
The tunnel was as dark as the entrance had promised. Cook stepped as quietly as he could on the gravel ballast beneath the tracks. The boy was silent. Cook had known highly trained soldiers with less skill and stealth. Cook kept his left hand out, alternately feeling the damp brickwork of the pillars supporting the arches, then rough crates. As they passed the crates, he felt people stirring in the darkness. He smelt the sourness of bodies and clothes unwashed for weeks. This wasn’t just a wartime shelter, this felt like a place where people with no hope lived out their remaining time.
67
The lad stopped under one of the arches and nodded at Cook. His job done, he melted back into the darkness.
Cook stepped towards what looked like a wall of packing crates, looking for a foothold. In most of the bays he’d passed, people had been sprawled on top of the crates, a mezzanine level that presumably had the benefit of keeping them off the damp ground.
Some of the crates were recessed. Cook stepped into a gap left by one of the recessed crates. Three feet in, a gap opened up to his left, wide enough for him to squeeze through. When he did so, a subsequent gap opened up, leading deeper into the storage bay. Soon, he was in complete darkness, relying on the feel of the rough, wood crates hemming him in, following wherever the next gap led.
Ahead, he heard scuffling, then the low murmur of a man’s voice. A complaint. Someone in pain.
Cook stepped out of the darkness into a room – a gap in the crates about twelve feet wide and twelve feet deep. There were two stacks of bunkbeds, three bunks to a stack, on the far wall. In the middle of the small room, a Formica table and four, mismatched kitchen chairs. A kettle was boiling on a primus stove, and a tilley lamp hissed softly, lighting the space with a ghostly white light.
Reynolds was standing on one side of the space, to Cook’s right. He held a handkerchief to his face, a spreading bloom of blood covering the white cotton.
To Cook’s left, another man was holding Gracie captive, his arms around her chest. Cook recognised the man – he’d accompanied Reynolds into the pawnbrokers when Cook had found the clock. Gracie was struggling. Cook didn’t envy the man holding her. Like holding a tiger ready to take your head off the minute you let go.
‘You put your own daughter on the streets,’ she said, fixing Reynolds with a look conveying every ounce of the anger she was feeling.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Reynolds asked, nodding at Cook.
Gracie stopped her struggling now reinforcements had arrived.
‘Tell him,’ Gracie said, to Cook.
‘Ruby’s been seen at the Empire,’ Cook said. ‘I showed her picture to some of the girls working there, the Harriers. One of them recognised her.
Reynolds pulled the hankie away from his nose, tilted his head back.
‘All right,’ he said, eventually. He nodded to his man holding Gracie. ‘Let her go.’
