‘No,’ Margaret said. ‘Give me a name now, or this whole thing’s over. You’ll have to tell your boss you couldn’t make it work. Maybe they’ll understand.’
‘You don’t set the terms,’ the voice said.
‘If you want to work with me, I can assure you I set the terms,’ Margaret said, finishing the champagne.
Margaret heard a sigh from behind her. She sat and watched the goings-on in the crowded bar.
‘Here,’ the woman said. A hand appeared at Margaret’s elbow, holding a scrap of paper. Like passing notes at school. Margaret took the paper. A name and an address. She enjoyed the feeling of triumph, of flexing the power she was beginning to realise she possessed.
Margaret got up from the table. She didn’t look back. All the cloak-and-dagger stuff was silly, she knew, but she’d learnt the people who lived by it liked it if you played along. They tended to worry if you did anything to suggest it was a game.
*
In the lobby, the girl in the red dress was placing a telephone call from one of the public phones. Margaret felt sorry for her. Not much of a life, being sent into the lion’s den with the express goal of selling yourself to the worst kind of men.
‘Don’t waste your time with that one,’ Margaret said to her, as she passed. The young woman looked around in surprise.
‘He’s not who you think he is,’ Margaret said.
The girl flushed and moved her hand quickly behind her back, but not quick enough. Margaret caught sight of a man’s wallet. She re-appraised the girl. Not such a victim after all.
70
Reynolds put the phone down and stepped out of the telephone box.
‘Girl done good,’ he said. ‘Regent’s Place.’
Cook looked at the hotel, across the road. Dark in the blackout. He could see how it had lured Ruby in. The glamour, the feeling you were in the thick of it. The problem was, that sort of place attracted the wrong sort, like wasps to a fallen apple. Cook thought of the kind of man who’d prey on a young girl. He was looking forward to having words, once Ruby was safe.
*
The sirens had been going for twenty minutes. Cook and Reynolds sat in the car, in the darkness. Reynolds had pulled up against the curved railings on the right-hand side of the road. Behind the railings, a half-moon-shaped garden. Beyond the garden, the wider expanse of Regent’s Park. To their left, a handsome crescent of Regency houses – John Nash’s grand design for urban living. An ancient oak hung over the road, its roots making a mess of the pavement, forcing up the tarmac in waves.
They’d watched a flurry of people scurrying out of their houses as the siren started. A nightly exodus, well honed by now.
‘What do you reckon, the bombers come this far west?’ Reynolds muttered. The siren had been real enough, but they hadn’t heard any planes. Certainly no bombs.
‘Things continue much longer like this, there won’t be any East End left,’ Reynolds continued. ‘Then what?’
Cook had noticed a great many ‘TO LET’ signs in the surrounding streets. The crescent was relatively free of them. Even if the owners of these houses had left town, they wouldn’t be looking to those properties to earn an income. Many of the houses here, Cook suspected, were only used for certain times of the year, when the landed gentry would come to town for ‘the season’.
‘Pretty smart idea,’ Reynolds said. ‘You’ve got to hand it to her.’
Cook thought about it. A crowded shelter, the frisson of excitement as the sirens wail and the bombs go off. The sort of place where a person might talk, give away valuable information, to the right sort of listener.
‘Until someone makes the connection and decides to get their own back,’ Cook said.
Reynolds nodded in the darkness. He leant behind the driver’s seat and produced two tin hats. ‘Put this on – makes you invisible.’
A standard-issue helmet, with a thin, leather chinstrap. Cook had owned any number of them during his time in the army. You got to the point you forgot you were wearing it, got the strap the way you liked it, then you’d lose it, have to get another one. This one had two major differences – it was painted black, and it had three letters stencilled across the front.
ARP
‘You can go anywhere with that,’ Reynolds said. ‘Like having the keys to the city.’
As they walked away from the car, Cook noticed Reynolds had done the same to the car – ARP in bright white paint on the driver’s door. A clever way of becoming invisible.
Reynolds pulled a key ring from his coat pocket – it held a collection of picks. He had the front door unlocked in no more time than it would take a normal person to use a key.
