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Saracen Street was not marked. She had to guess it, and cut down a couple of dead-end alleys, but when she saw the waste ground left by fallen or demolished buildings, she knew she was correct. This ruin was where she was meant to leave the money that would buy her Piers’s life. The waste ground was surprisingly large. Some blackened stone gave her a clue as to what had happened to the buildings here. No doubt whatever had been left from the fire had been cannibalised for new buildings and repairs, but not here. Ape struck out across the ground as though heading for the triangular-shaped alehouse she recognized diagonally opposite.

All the hairs on her body stood up in warning, as though someone unseen was watching her. And yet she encountered no one as she walked, nor any signs of habitation in the looming buildings. No vagrants or beggars or drunks swilling from gin bottles. Even for them, this place was too uncongenial for a party. There was no shelter here, and precious little anywhere nearby. Even the dogs had eschewed it. Which begged the question of who could be watching her.

On this part of Saracen Street was only the yard of some long dead business, and a crumbling one-storey cottage that looked older than Seven Dials itself and utterly deserted. On the next alley corner was a tall building with every window boarded. Then nothing until the triangular public house at the far end of the waste ground—The Blue Ruin, which seemed apt enough. Beyond, in all directions, was the maze of dark, mean alleys and inter-connected buildings that formed one of the infamous rookeries.

She dared not stop to look around with any care. She thought she spotted the longer, ruined wall on the waste ground, by which she was meant to leave the money, but she didn’t even glance at it. Instead, she marched on and into The Blue Ruin as though that was her only intention.

Once, she had swept the floors in a place like this, just for a corner of dirty sawdust to sleep on when the doors were locked. The few drinkers scattered around the room amongst the fog of tobacco smoke stared at her, for she was a stranger.

Ignoring them, she slouched up to the bar and asked for ale in her deepest, roughest voice, shoving a penny across the counter. The beverage she received in return did not look like ale or anything else she was willing to drink, but she took it anyway and sat on the rickety chair by the dirty window. Theoretically, it looked onto the waste ground she had just crossed. In practice, it was so dirty that she could barely see out of it at all. She gazed morosely in its direction anyway.

Eventually, she could make out the shapes of the ruins looming out of the ground. She believed she would see any movement, though there wasn’t any right now.

“’Ere! Ape, innit?”

Hiding her instinctive alarm, April scowled at the man at the next table. “Who wants to know?”

“Don’t you remember me? Raddle. Worked for poor old Lord couple of years back.”

April did remember him, the sly scum bag. She even smiled. “Guess that’ll teach both of us.”

Raddle chortled, for Lord was in prison now, if not worse. Thanks largely to Piers. “What you doing in the Dials, then?”

“Oh, the usual,” April said vaguely. “Looking for opportunity.”

“Find any?”

April grimaced. The waste ground was still deserted. There seemed to be no movement in or from the other over-looking buildings or even the empty yard. “What d’you think?”

“Well, you ain’t looking any older,” Raddle remarked, eyeing her a little too closely. “Or taller. Must be a game in that, for someone’s been feeding you up. What’s your ken, then?”

April shifted on the chair and shrugged impatiently. “Ain’t got one right now.”

“Went wrong for you, did it?” Raddle asked with malicious sympathy.

April sniffed, wiped her sleeve across her nose. Ape’s habits were flying back to her. “Anything happening round here, Raddle?”

“Like what?”

“Anything interesting?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Why don’t no one build on that ground, then?” April asked.

“Be my guest,” Raddle said, laughing at his own joke.

April pretended to drink her beer, though she didn’t let it touch her lips. It was bad enough handling the mug. How quickly she had grown so fastidious...

“Then you don’t know no one looking for a useful lad?” she asked.

“You ain’t that useful,” Raddle said bluntly.

“I’m quick on me feet!”

“You are that,” Raddle allowed. “Only reason Lord kept you around. That and you were small enough to shove through windows. You ain’t anymore.”

“Then you don’t know of anything?” April said, genuinely disappointed. “You’ll let me know?”