The Body at the Tower

Twenty-six

Southwark





It was an enormous, accidental tenement – a pair of houses that seemed to have fallen into each other and thus been prevented from collapsing. One door was boarded over, and none of the ground-floor windows was intact. It was far beneath what Mary expected for a skilled labourer, even one intent on saving money, and her first, angry thought was that Jones had played her false. It was a simple matter, spouting off a random address. By the time she discovered his perfidy, he’d have long departed the Pig and Whistle. Or perhaps he’d not bother. Quite likely if she went back to the pub, she’d find him draped across two chairs, laughing at her credulity.

She stood for a moment on the pavement, irresolute. This was a waste of time. Yet where could she go next but St John’s Wood, to report her failures? As she hovered outside the ramshackle building, a skinny boy hobbled out of the door. He moved stiffly, and descended the two front steps with the care of an invalid. Mary’s eyes widened. Surely not…

Yet as the boy turned, he caught sight of her watching and recognition flashed across his freckled face. He waved a hand in greeting.

“Jenkins!” Mary sped across the street. “I been looking for you!”

“Well, I didn’t know.” He tried to sound sullen but couldn’t quite control a smile of pleasure. “How’s tricks, then?”

Relieved as she was to see Jenkins safe, Mary steered the conversation round to Reid as soon as she reasonably could. Jenkins was utterly unsurprised at the mention of his name.

“Aye, he’s a good one, that Reid. He’s the reason we live here, now.” He caught Mary’s expression of surprise, and grinned his old, knowing grin. “You didn’t know? He felt that bad about me losing my place through Keenan, he come and found us in that cellar. He’s the one what got us a room in here.” He gestured behind.

“Very decent of him,” said Mary cautiously. It seemed like a small enough gesture, given Reid’s illicit income.

But Jenkins was clearly thrilled. “Decent!” he scolded. “It ain’t decent – saintly is what it is. Bloody Harky wouldn’t give me even an extra day’s wages, for all he’s a gent and rolling in money and a teetotalling saint, but Reid’s paying for me and the kiddies to live, food and all, on his wages. That’s a sight more than decent.”

“It’s all right, for those who can afford it.” Mary didn’t like Jenkins’s new tone of worshipful fervour. Especially not towards a crooked labourer who’d soon be sacked and tried for his part in the site thefts.

“What d’you mean?” Now he was all bristling suspicion again, much as he’d been on the day they’d first met. “What you saying?”

“About the brickies being on the take,” said Mary patiently. “You’re the one who told me.”

Jenkins made a noise of disgust. “I never said that. It’s Keenan what’s on the take, all the time. Him and Wick, they played Harky blind. But Reid weren’t never a part of that. Reid, he’s living here now, ’cause he can’t keep his old digs and us.”

She hesitated, unsure where Jenkins’s hero worship left off and his canny knowingness began. If Reid wasn’t part of the thieving ring… “Where’s he now, then? Isn’t he with Keenan?”

Jenkins looked worried. “I dunno. His room, it’s next to ours, and he’s always out of a Sunday, at Mrs Wick’s. But he ain’t never come home last night.”

“He went off with Keenan yesterday.”

“He never!”

“I saw them. We all saw them.” As she explained Reid’s nervous departure from the pub, she watched Jenkins’s expression grow more and more worried. The lad was in earnest about Reid’s shining character.

“We got to find him,” said Jenkins, thoroughly alarmed now. “That Keenan – he’s a bad one.”

“So everyone says.”

“You and me,” he said fiercely. “We’ll find him.”