Cook kept his focus on the gun. He could feel it, in the man’s hand. Fingers to be pried away. A fight to the death,no quarter given. Neither man fighting by the Queensberry rules. Cook took a knee to his stomach. In return he jabbed his elbow – got something soft – the neck, he thought.
Cook felt a weight on top of him. He still had the man pinned down, still struggling to get the gun. The weight shifted, the same goal – getting the gun. Another pair of hands wrapped around his, which were wrapped around the man’s fingers. All trying for the same goal – to get control of the pistol.
The gunshot was deafening – inches from Cook’s ear. Cook rolled away, feeling blood.
Cook stopped rolling, waiting for the pain. But it didn’t come. It wasn’t him.
Reynolds stepped back, the gun in his hand. He ran to the shelter, fired again, this time at the lock.
He pulled the door open and stared into the darkness.
*
Cook knelt by the dying man. He rolled him onto his side to inspect the wound. The bullet had gone into his chest, a small hole. His back was another story. Half gone. The bullet had done its job, destroying everything in its path, ripping, churning, blowing through with a building pressure-wave. Cook lay the man on his back. No sense in pretending there was going to be any recovery.
Reynolds joined him.
‘Where is she?’ Reynolds asked.
Cook was distracted by a sound from the house. He saw Dottie standing at the back door.
The man’s breathing was ragged. A miracle he was still alive.
‘Why should I tell you?’ the man asked, clinging on to anger as if it would see him through.
Cook put his hand on the wound in the chest. Pushed into the inflamed flesh. The man gasped in pain.
‘Tell us, and I’ll stop,’ Cook said.
‘Blown up,’ the man said, hurriedly. ‘On the bus.’
‘You brought her here,’ Cook said. ‘We found her gas mask.’
The man shook his head, gasping for air, his lungs filling with blood.
‘Dead,’ he said. ‘Saw her leave the hotel. Then the explosion.’
‘You’re lying,’ Reynolds said.
‘Found the mask on the street. Should have left it. Sentimental.’
‘Ruby was in your way,’ Cook said. ‘You had to get rid of her.’
‘No,’ the man gasped. ‘We were ... both working a scam. Got in ... each other’s way. Not her fault.’
*
Margaret hurried out of the empty house. Nobody had seen her, they’d all had their hands full with the dying man. The crescent was quiet – lots of empty houses judging by the ‘TO LET’ signs.
When she’d followed the young woman from the hotel, she’d imagined she’d get answers. But now all she had were questions. Of all the people she’d expected to bump into in London, Cook was at the bottom of the list. They’d spent a night in town at the beginning of their courtship. A hotel in Leicester Square, a dinner in Soho, a fight to the death with two hoodlums in the park. But Cook was no lover of the city. What was he doing here? And how was he involved with the confidence trickster?
At least she knew the girl was in safe hands.
75
The Northern Line at Warren Street was busy. Office workers kept late, now off home for a few hours’ sleep between the raids, doing their best to ignore the gallery of women and children camped out on the platform. A line had been painted along the length of it, halfway between the wall and the platform edge. Two worlds. Between the painted line and the platform edge it was business as usual – tired civil servants in scuffed bowler hats. Women in sensible office clothes and sensible shoes. Behind the line, blankets laid out to claim territory, each one anxiously guarded.
The platform stank. The nearest toilet was at the top of the escalator, in the ticket hall. Anyone who left their blanket for that long would return to find it gone. A makeshift curtain at the end of the platform hid what Margaret assumed was a bucket. Judging by the smell, the bucket was then emptied onto the track, perhaps thrown optimistically into the mouth of the tunnel. Out of sight, out of mind.
