It was pitch black without Joseph’s torch.

Somewhere above, he heard the unmistakeable creak of a floorboard.

Edward felt exposed and vulnerable and yet thrillingly alive. It was a strange combination: fright and a tremendous sense of exhilaration. Here was the adventure that his life had been missing. Cooking dinners and selling cars were for the birds. Edward wanted his life to feel like this.

The door opened again. There was a moment between the handle twisting and the realisation that it was Joseph returning when his heart felt as cold and still as a lump of ice. He was carrying a suitcase. He opened it: jewellery, silver cutlery and plate, a gold watch, some ready money.

“Not bad?” he grinned.

“The suitcase, too?”

“It’s useful. It’s a prop––you’re less likely to get stopped with one.”

Joseph unbolted the front door, closing it quietly once they were outside. The rain was still lashing the street and a peel of thunder rattled the glass in the windows. Edward loosened the umbrella and unfurled it above them. Joseph pressed in tight. “Come on,” he said with a feral grin, and set off across the pavement. They hurried away.

20

EDWARD ENDURED A NIGHT OF INSOMNIA and, when he did manage to sleep, panicked dreams. He stayed in the bedsitter, trying to come up with a way to avoid the interview that Violet had arranged. He couldn’t help it. He was gripped tightly by fear: the fear of having agreed to something that would be irretrievable, the fear of discovery, of capture, of punishment. He gave up the pretence of sleep and stood at the window with the lights turned off, staring across the chimneystacks and rooftops. It was very cold and he had burnt up all the gas. The tap of the fire was up, the broken asbestos elements grey and cold, the air like hot sour cream. Dark clouds swept across the moon and fat drops began to fall. They stroked against the pane to begin with but eventually they strengthened, drumming a relentless beat against the glass. Edward listened to them fall, unable to return to sleep.

* * *

HENRY DRAKE WAS ALREADY WAITING in the Moka coffee bar in Frith Street. Edward paused in the doorway and wondered, yet again, whether there was some neat way that he could extricate himself from this whole sorry mess. But there was not. He had rolled his predicament around and around in his mind but had come up with nothing. He could just flat-out refuse but doing that would have been tantamount to shouting from the rooftops that he had something to hide. He could have cited a desire for privacy, or a tendency towards modesty, but either would have marked him as the kind of shrinking violet that he instinctively knew would repulse the ostentatious Violet. And, more than everything, she would see his saying no as thumbing his nose at her charity. There was nothing else for it: he would just have to do his best to minimise the damage that the interview might do and get on with it. He would have to be smart and watch his step.

The bar was busy, the proprietor––an amiable Italian named Pino Reservato––passing to and from his customers. A pine bar held the till and a neat pile of mugs and saucers, and behind it steamed one of Gaggia’s clattering machines. A curving, undulating countertop stretched along the side of the room with cushioned stools set into the floor at regular intervals along it. A mural depicting various styles of ship was fixed to the wall, this theme then repeated on the counter-top. A wire cage fashioned into letters from the Chinese alphabet contained two miserable looking macaws. It was busy: office girls chatted happily with their escorts drinking Grenadilla Juice from the half-shells of coconuts; shoppers and tourists rested and took refreshment; businessmen enjoyed a quick meal, open sandwiches in the Swedish style contained continental savouries. The hubbub was convivial but it did nothing to improve Edward’s pensive mood as he made his way to the table.

Drake looked up. “Mr. Fabian?”

“Hello, Mr. Drake.”

“Call me Henry, please. Pleasure to meet you––a real pleasure.”

“Likewise, I’m sure.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you. What will you have?”

“Just a large black, please.”

Drake went to the bar and placed the order. Edward looked him over: he was a plain-looking man in his early middle age, a little shabby around the edges. He wore a stained mackintosh that was fastened with a belt, a battered old trilby and a pair of good-quality trousers that Edward saw had frayed around the cuffs. Nice things that had been allowed to go to seed, not dissimilar to his own things. What did that say about him? Edward had dug into the man’s history in preparation for their encounter, spending several hours reading his press cuttings in the National Library. Drake had been a big noise, once, Fleet Street’s rising star, but a story he had written had been discredited and he had been cast out. It had been a catastrophic error on his part: Drake had been caught lying, and if Edward had been in a better mood he might have appreciated the irony in that. He had made up ground again with a scoop on the psychopath they called the Black Out Ripper who had terrorised the West End during The Blitz but he was still running, still chasing past glories that, by the looks of things, he would never fully recapture.

Drake brought the coffees to the table and sat down. “As I say, good to meet you. I’m pleased we’ve been able to sort it out.”

“I’ve read some of your articles, Mr. Drake.”

“It’s Henry. And how did you find them?”

“Very colourful. The latest one, the ‘girl who leads a life of shame’––that one was particularly interesting.”

“Just an innocent mill-girl from Sheffield,’ Drake intoned as if Edward was about to take dictation for him. “I’m writing her confession in five instalments, a warning to other impressionable young lasses like her. As a matter of fact, I believe I left her being chased down a back street by a seedy stage-door Johnny in a cloth cap. Exciting, I thought. A nice little cliff-hanger, keep them interested.”

“What happened to her?”

“She’ll be just fine. The Sunday Graphic is a family paper, after all.”

“You’re making the whole thing up?”

“Of course I am. That’s the sell––it’s life, but hotter, stronger and neater.’

“What a peculiar way to earn a living,” Edward said. “Telling untruths. Didn’t they cause you problems before?”

“You have been doing your research, Edward. And yes, of course, you’re right, but you have to understand that newspapers are all, more or less, in two distinct kinds of business. There’s the proper news side. You know: meat will be dearer tomorrow, tax likely to rise, bond-holders beware. That sort of thing’s supposed to be true––and you might say I learnt that lesson the hard way, although we could have a long discussion about how half of what they said about me was untrue. The other side of the business is the one the money’s in.”

“And that’s what you’re in now?”

“That’s right. It’s called human interest, although you might as well just call it showbusiness. Non-stop vaudeville, changed every day, and always leave them laughing. If you can write revue sketches and begging letters and you can clean up dirty jokes, you’ve got what it takes to have a decent little career. That’s what people want to read, so that’s what I write. It’s of no importance that the mill-girl doesn’t exist, except that it saves me the trouble of convincing some deluded little thing from up north that the events that have to happen to her really did happen. It also saves my employer some money.”

“Do you tell your readers it’s all made up?”

Drake sugared his coffee heavily. “Of course not. What they don’t know can’t hurt them. Or me, come to think about it.”

“Whoever said dishonesty didn’t pay?”