I pushed into a telephone box as the rain splashed the pavements again, and closed the familiar red door behind me. Outside, the crowds still flowed by, silent now beyond the windows of the box. It smelled pungently of cigarette smoke in there, as if the last caller had smoked his entire supply. I stared at the telephone for a long time, my mind moving back and forth like a rocking horse, going over the same ground again and again. Rain splashed the glass. My feet were cold and sore. Finally, I picked up the receiver and had the operator connect me to the exchange George Sutter had given me: Hampstead 1207.
The woman who picked up the line was nasal, businesslike, obviously a secretary of some kind. She did not speak a greeting. “To whom am I speaking?” she said in my ear.
“My name is Ellie Winter,” I replied, my voice croaking. I had not spoken for hours. “I have a message for George Sutter.”
The woman made no comment. “What is your message?”
“Where is he?” I asked her, knowing I would get no answer.
“What is your message?” the woman asked again.
I closed my eyes. I smelled the cigarette smoke, the damp, close air of the telephone box. I listened to water patter on the roof. I was speaking to a stranger I couldn’t see, sending my message down the lines to a woman who did not know me, did not care if I lived or died. No, I was no longer afraid. I was angry.
“‘You missed him,’” I said, each word lifting off me like a weight. “‘Ramona is dead.’” I thought it over, and added, “‘I resign.’ That is the message.” Then I hung up.
There was a hard rap on the glass door, and I jumped. I turned to see a fortyish man in a heavy mackintosh holding an umbrella over his head, knocking on the door and gesturing impatiently for me to get on with it. I blew out a breath, then gestured back at him.
“Go away,” I called through the glass, and picked up the receiver to make my next telephone call.
* * *
It was raining fully by the time James found me at the Saratoga Hotel. I had taken a seat on one of the plush chairs at the back of the lobby, next to a luxurious fern placed in the corner. My shoes were slowly drying by then, and I’d taken off my dripping hat. A drink sat untouched on the table before me.
James wore a coat of dark gray, his umbrella folded under his arm. He dropped into the seat across from me without a word. I watched his strong, easy movements, smelled the cool, rain-scented air he brought with him, ran my gaze along the shadow of blond stubble on his jaw. He looked at me for a long time as people flowed past behind him and laughter came from a group exiting the elevator and heading out into the night.
“All right,” he said finally. “It’s done. I went past there myself. They’ve taken away the body, and the crowd of neighbors is starting to disperse.”
I licked my lip. “Thank you.”
He sighed and took off his damp hat, tossing it onto the seat next to him. “Of all the telephone calls, that one was the least expected.” He nodded toward the drink in front of me. “Are you going to drink that?”
“I couldn’t leave her there,” I said. “Just leave her—like that. You know I couldn’t. I had to know that someone had found her.”
“Well, it looks like Sutter got your message and called the police. Or, more likely, had a lackey do it.” He picked up my drink and took a swallow, the strong muscles of his throat working. He caught my glance and the smile he gave me was bitter. “Don’t worry. I’m not a drunk anymore. I’ve just had a hell of a day.”
“What about Davies?” I said. I’d asked him to check on her, to see whether she had ever come home. Then I had sat here, waiting for him as the centuries ticked by, knowing deep down what the answer would be.
James leaned his sleek bulk back in his chair and shook his head. “She hasn’t come home. I even checked with that fake skimmer who rents the shop on the ground floor. She hasn’t heard anyone come or go, and she’s been taking clients since four o’clock.”
“There was time,” I said, the words tumbling out of me, though I didn’t move. My body felt frozen in place, my legs stiff. “I’ve been thinking about it while I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you. There was just time for the same man to have taken Davies and killed Ramona. If he was—if he was quick with Davies . . . If he disposed of her somewhere . . .”
“Stop it,” he said, his voice hard.
“I failed them.” The words seemed to crack me open. “I failed them both. I could have been half an hour earlier. Twenty minutes. When I stood on Ramona’s front step, I could have turned around and waited for him and screamed.”
“You’d have had a knife in the ribs for your trouble,” James said. “Quick and quiet. This man is no amateur, Ellie. He’s no madman running around the streets speaking in tongues. He’s some sort of professional. Your best action was to run.”
“I keep coming back to the rope.” I leaned forward now, put my elbows on my knees. A man in an evening jacket passed us, looked me up and down, and carried on. “The rope and the sign that said the stairs were out of order. He’d set it up. He knew the layout of Ramona’s building. He knew when she’d be home, how to get her to let him into her flat. He knew how much time he needed. He knew the lift made a lot of noise. He took the time to bring supplies with him. What kind of man does that?”
“Jesus, Ellie.” James leaned forward, took my hands in his. He gripped me hard, his fingertips pressing into my wrists past the edges of my gloves, and in the middle of everything I reveled almost painfully in that touch, enjoyed the fire it set in my veins with a fierceness I did not recognize. “Shut up, will you? It’s driving me insane, just thinking of how close you came.”
“George Sutter has been having me followed,” I told him. “But I’d lost him by then. So I have no other witnesses, no one who saw.”
James’s grip grew even harder on my wrists. “What did you say?”
So I told him about the man in the houndstooth jacket, how he had followed me to James’s flat that morning—it felt like decades ago—and to Piccadilly Circus, and how I’d lost him. James stared at me for a long minute when I finished, his gaze on me. His mood was as wild as mine, I realized, and the thought made my heart thump and my blood sing crazily.