The Pierrot had “coughed up” Maddox, Frazzini said. “Our guest here tells me that the Huns were paid to go to the Amethyst last night and cause trouble.” It was their bad luck, or plain ineptitude, that “they ended up shooting one of my boys. I’m afraid my man Aldo is dead, but it could easily have been one of your guests.” The torturers crossed themselves reverently at the mention of Aldo’s name.
It was Maddox, too, who had attempted to burn down the Pixie. In fact, it was himself, the Pierrot admitted (although not freely), who at Maddox’s behest and for a reward of two pounds had bought a tin of Aladdin pink paraffin, soaked a rag in it and then lobbed it into the Pixie’s kitchen.
“What are you going to do with him?” Nellie asked, contemplating the sorry figure of the Pierrot.
Frazzini ran his finger across his throat. “Set an example,” he said.
“An eye for an eye,” Nellie said, unperturbed. A corpse for a corpse.
* * *
—
Hawker was snoozing when Nellie rapped sharply on his window with her cane, nearly causing him to have a heart attack.
“I think I’ll ride up front,” she said, to Hawker’s further alarm, clambering in beside him. “See a bit of this part of London on the way back.”
“Not much to see,” Hawker said.
“There’s always something to see,” Nellie said, “even if it’s nothing.” She chuckled to herself. It was the stuff of nightmares to Hawker’s ears.
Den of Iniquity
London after the war was full of people who would sell you anything—drugs, guns, women. They would sell you back the goods they stole off you and offer their souls up for a square meal, but Niven was only in the market for information and in exchange for a small sum he was able to learn where Landor was to be found most evenings, drinking and gambling with his fellow lowlifes in a den of iniquity in Bayswater.
The building had a derelict air. Only a chink of light escaping from a shuttered basement window beneath a shop indicated occupation. It seemed Niven had arrived ahead of his target, for as he approached the building he spotted Landor rollicking along the street, seemingly a man without a care in the world.
Niven stepped out in front of him as Landor was about to descend the steps to the basement and join his disreputable confrères.
“Evening, Mr. Coker,” Landor said, quite unfazed by Niven’s sudden appearance. Niven didn’t bother with the niceties. He grabbed Landor by his lapels, picked him up and hung him by his jacket on the railings. “My dog’s ready to tear your face off, Landor,” he said. On cue, Keeper gave a throaty growl.
“What do you want?” Landor said, flippant in the face of threat. He was used to violence, on both the giving and receiving end.
“Why were you asking about Gwendolen Kelling?”
Landor didn’t answer and Niven grasped him round the throat and shook him. “Answer me. Why are you following her? Who are you working for—Azzopardi? What does he want with Gwendolen Kelling?”
“Azzopardi?” Landor seemed genuinely amused. “You think I’m following that woman for Azzopardi?”
“For someone else?”
“You really don’t know?” Landor laughed again. He laughed far too much for Niven’s taste.
“No, I really don’t know,” Niven said, increasingly annoyed by so much mirth. He drew his fist back, readying himself to smash it into Landor’s grinning face. “Who are you working for?”
“Your mother, Mr. Coker,” Landor laughed. “I’m working for your mother.”
Niven left him dangling on the railings and retrieved his car from where he’d parked it two streets away. He could swear he could still hear Landor laughing as he drove off.
* * *
—
“Well, what do you make of that?” he said to Keeper in the passenger seat as he sped along St. John’s Wood Road. His mother was using this man Landor to keep an eye on Gwendolen Kelling. It followed that Gwendolen must be working for one of Nellie’s enemies. Azzopardi or Maddox. She could be in danger from either of them, but the greatest threat to her safety must surely come from his mother.
Niven’s arrival back in Hanover Terrace coincided with the Bentley disgorging Nellie. Did she never sleep? It was three in the morning—where had she been? There was no point in asking her, she would never say. No point in asking her about Gwendolen Kelling either. She prided herself on her deviousness.
He had only just fallen off the cliff of sleep when he was being shaken quietly awake by Nellie. “Get up quickly,” she whispered. “It’s an emergency.”
The Pigeon
Freda woke on a bench in Drury Lane Gardens, where she had spent an uncomfortable night, her faithful little suitcase serving as a hard pillow. The gardens had once been a church burial ground and there were still gravestones near the wall. Spending the night in the company of the dead did not make for a sound sleep. Freda had scoffed at Florence when she had gone on about King Tut and his curse, but there had been moments during the night when she was prepared to believe in the supernatural world.
Freda had soon been harried off her bench and out of the gardens by a policeman, as if she were a tramp. The policeman had called her some dreadful names. Impugning my virtue, she thought, which was something Duncan used to say, putting on a lisp and a funny hand gesture. Freda couldn’t have spelt “impugn” correctly to save her life. (“From the Latin,” Duncan said. “Pugnare, ‘to fight.’?” He’d been to a “good” school. “Several lifetimes ago,” he said.) “This is no place for tarts,” the policeman said, “so get along or I’ll have you up before the bench in Bow Street for vagrancy.” Freda wondered if he had a daughter of his own and if this was how he would like her to be treated, but she didn’t ask. “Meek, not cheek” when dealing with the Old Bill, Duncan used to caution.
She was an orphan of the storm, which was something that Vanda had once called her, even though she wasn’t an orphan and the weather at the time had been quite pleasant, for once.
Freda was homeless and penniless, not to mention Florence-less. It was not a position that she had ever expected to find herself in. She had expected applause at the very least. I am at a dead end, she exclaimed to herself, melodrama being all that was left to her. She was also so hungry she felt as if all her insides had shrivelled back to her bones.
How long would it take for her to starve to death? Would anyone even notice if she did? Would she end up in the Thames, swept into the murky waters on the outgoing tide, along with the morning rubbish?
Freda’s self-assurance had taken an awful battering. A lesser girl, in her opinion, might have given up by now. She was not a lesser girl. A lesser girl might consider selling themselves on the street, the choice of last resort. She was not that lesser girl either. Not yet.
* * *
—
By great good luck, on the way out of the gardens she spotted a sixpence glinting from a crack in the pavement. She could have cried with happiness. It was true that Vanda always used to say, “Find a coin, pass it on or bad luck will follow,” but Freda didn’t see how her luck could get much worse and so she pocketed the coin.
In a café in Neal Street that opened early for the market’s porters, the sixpence bought the solace of a sausage sandwich and a cup of tea, and as sugar was free, Freda stirred spoon after spoon of it into her tea. She ate the sausage sandwich as slowly as she could so it would last as long as possible, but eventually, as she knew she would be, she was kicked out of the café. “Oi, miss,” the owner said, “this isn’t a library. You can’t just sit there all day without spending money.”
Freda left reluctantly, hauling her suitcase along the Mall towards St. James’s Park, where she alighted on another bench. Wary of park-keepers, she tried to look as if she were merely enjoying watching the ducks. She had no bread with which to feed them. If she had, she would have eaten it herself.