Jack Stewart’s group had been on duty all night around St Paul’s where the Germans had had considerable success, though the cathedral remained untouched.
“Goodness, Chief. This is a tragedy.” Evans took off his hat and wiped his face. Soot covered nearly every inch of his face and almost hairless head. The whites of his eyes stood out like searchlights in the black-out.
“Of course, it’s a tragedy. This whole war’s a tragedy, Evans.”
Evans joined Stewart on one of the steps leading up to the cathedral. “No, I mean this is a particular tragedy. This whole area next to the cathedral, Paternoster Row. It’s been the heartland of literary London for centuries – the booksellers, the printers, the binders and so on. As the City has been to business, Paternoster Row has been to books. Now look at it.”
Stewart looked up though he knew well enough what he’d see. The shells and skeletons of buildings and here and there a surviving building blackened and faltering on its foundations. Most of the easily found bodies had been ferried off in ambulances by now, but there were still bodies to be discovered amid the wreckage of bricks, timber and slate, and he could see figures moving carefully in the dark on that errand. His group had just been relieved by an AFS station from Paddington and they were taking a breather before returning to Chelsea. Their session of duty had not been without personal loss.
“Who’ll tell Cooper’s wife?”
“Oh, someone at headquarters. I’d do it myself, but when I discussed it in principle with Archie Steele a few weeks ago, he said I should leave it to the ordinary channels. Some bureaucrat will go and see her. I’m going to send a message though. Tell her she can come to the station and see me if she likes.”
The two men fell silent. Bill Cooper had been training the hose at one of the crumbling old printing houses that Evans had been lamenting when a piece of falling masonry had landed on him and killed him outright. When they’d managed to get him out from under the stone and bricks, they found his face had been smashed almost beyond recognition.
Evans swallowed hard as this grisly vision played again in his mind. “A good chap. A little long-winded, but a good chap.”
Stewart patted him on the shoulder. “Did you get that little bit of business successfully concluded?”
The image of Cooper’s pulped face receded to be replaced by the smug leer of the red-headed Russian. “Yes. Thanks for giving me the time.”
Evans had gone through the paintings meticulously. There had been several choice items – an early Turner, a Van Ruisdael, a Blake drawing, a portrait that looked very much like a Rembrandt but which he had categorised after a little thought as “school of”. He had had to race through everything and the furniture had only been given a cursory look. He’d totalled everything up at a provisional value of at least two thousand pounds. Trubetskoi had been very pleased and gave him five guineas. “Guineas is what you pay in the arts world, is it not, Mr Evans? So guineas it shall be.” Five guineas would go a long way for Evans. It was more than he had expected and more work of the same nature was promised. The hot work of the night had taken his mind off the subject, but now that Stewart had reminded him of it, the nagging doubt reasserted itself. It was good money and he desperately needed it, but what on earth was he getting himself into?
“Come on then, Mr Evans, let’s get going. Can you round everyone up?”
As they turned, there were warning shouts to their right and they remained motionless as one of the surviving buildings crumbled noisily to the ground.
*