As a way of telling his man that he knew he still had his previous connections, Quex could not have chosen a better way without actually saying so. It was also by way of an order.

‘I can leave that with you?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Peter replied.

‘On second thoughts, don’t drop in on McKevitt until I have had a sniff around. I still think you should do so, but perhaps when we are a little longer along the track.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

If the pub in which he had drunk with Vince was a smoky den, the Lamb & Flag in Covent Garden was equally bad, though the clientele tended to be better heeled. The walls and ceiling were dark and so nicotine stained they were near to the colour of the dark-brown wood of the bar, as well as the furniture that lined the outer walls.

Cal, being a non-smoker, was not much of a man for pubs because of that, but at least at the Lamb, in the summer, you could drink outside on the cobbled cul-de-sac and enjoy the warm weather. There was no piety in his being a non-smoker; he had, like every young man of his generation, been once addicted to the weed.

He had decided to give it up when he had seen a fellow officer on the Western Front take a fatal bullet in the side of his head a second after he lit up. Some people said cigarettes could kill; he knew they could, just as he knew that the desire for one was best avoided when you could not be certain of a decent supply.

Snuffly Bower smoked like a chimney; he was also a man so enamoured of his expensive camel-coloured Crombie overcoat that he would wear it on what was a warm day. The rest of his clothing was of equal quality, if a little loud in the dog-tooth check. Again, as usual, he had on his brown bowler hat and was at a full table surrounded by fellow drinkers, all of whom, in too-sharp suits and shifty appearance, had the air of those who existed on the edge of the law.

An illegal bookmaker by trade and undoubtedly a fence, Cal had often wondered what Snuffly’s given name was, though he had no doubt how he had come by his moniker by which he was known. Snuffly’s lips never moved without the accompaniment of a twitch of his substantial purple hooter and a loud sniff, followed by a touch of his knuckle as, like that of a gloved boxer, it swept across the tip.

His illegal beat was the nearby fruit and vegetable market and in this locale it was well established that he was king. Anyone who wandered into his patch from nearby Soho or from south of the Thames would be welcome as long as they were not on the fiddle, for if they were, he could be brutal. The hail-fellow-well-met, which was his natural front, was just that; Snuffly was a villain to his toecaps and a very handy man with the knife he always carried.

‘Mr Jardine, as I live and breave!’ he cried when he spotted Cal in the doorway, before turning to his companion. ‘Move your fat arse, Freddy, old son, an’ let a real gent park his.’

Freddy slid out quickly, with Snuffly still beaming. ‘What can I get you?’

‘I’m on my feet, Snuffly, it’s my shout.’

‘Did I not say he was a gent?’ came the reply, aimed at those still sitting with him. ‘Pint of Bass then, Mr Jardine, if you don’t mind.’ The nose twitched, the air was inhaled and the crooked thumb moved. ‘You up west for a bit of fun?’

Cal just shook his head before moving to the bar to order a whisky and water as well as Snuffly’s pint. By the time he had been served and turned to go back the man was on his own and soon they were sitting side by side talking in subdued voices. To begin with it was small talk: business was bad, the coppers were bent and there were folk – ‘You would not believe it, guv’ – who did not see the need to make sure that his life was peaceful.

As soon as it got to the real purpose of Cal’s visit, Snuffly removed his brown bowler hat, put his elbow on the table and held it out so it covered their faces; he had, as Cal knew from past visits, a morbid fear of lip-readers.

‘I need two passports and driving licences to go with them.’

As Cal said this he passed under the table the set of photographs he had just had done as well as a slip of paper with the necessary details, names and addresses taken from the telephone directory, to cover himself and Vince.

‘One of these days you must tell me what it is you get up to.’

‘One of these days, Snuffly, I will,’ Cal replied, which was as good as saying, ‘In your dreams.’

There was no temptation to ask where Snuffly got his passports, not that he would have got an answer any more than he was prepared to provide one himself, but it had to be the case that some of his contacts were ‘dips’ working the West End and beyond: the theatres, hotels and, further afield, the train stations.

Either that or they were housebreakers; it made no odds – the documents he had provided for Cal in the past were of top-notch quality and, since he also obviously had a forger on tap, quick as well.

‘Need a few stamps on them too, Snuffly, to make them look used.’

‘Will be done, Mr Jardine.’

Cal reached into his jacket to fetch out his wallet, only to feel an immediate hand on his arm, surprisingly firm in its grip from a man he never associated with physical strength. ‘No need for a down payment, guv, is there?’ Sniff. ‘Not for you.’ Sniff. ‘You can pay when you collect.’

Cal smiled and nodded, pleased because he suspected it was a lot harder to get an account with Snuffly than it was to get one at Coutts Bank, just down the road on the Strand. He exited to streets full of the detritus of the nearby market: abandoned boxes, discarded paper blown on the wind and the odd drunk – hardly surprising in an area where the public houses, to cater for the thousands who worked and came here to trade, opened at six in the morning.

The taxi driver smoked too, so that by the time it dropped him in West Heath Road, and once he had paid off the driver, looking across to the heath under its canopy of trees in full leaf he was tempted to go for a stroll to clear his lungs. That had to be put aside till later; the man with whom he had an appointment was ever busy, and even if he considered him a friend, it was not a good idea to keep Sir Monty Redfern waiting.

The first surprise was to find a strange female answering the door when he had his hat raised and a winning smile on his face to greet someone else entirely. Expecting a young lovely, what he was presented with was a rather dumpy woman in shapeless clothing, with untidy hair on her head and a great deal more of that on her face, none of it made more attractive by the guttural voice with which she enquired as to his reason for calling.

‘Where’s Elsa?’ he asked, once he had been shown into the large drawing room overlooking the garden that Monty used as an office.

If the furniture was as valuable as the substantial Hampstead house, which ran in total to some twenty-eight rooms, the man who owned it did not look the part of a Jewish millionaire. Careless about dress, Monty looked his usual scruffy self. For all his wealth he rarely polished his shoes or worried about the crumpled state of his clothing.

‘Our little beauty is in Prague, Callum, doing good work with refugees.’

The name of the Czech capital gave him pause, but Cal decided not to mention it as his destination for the moment. ‘How bad is it?’

‘As bad as it gets with that bastard Hitler breathing down people’s neck. Already they are moving away from the Sudetenland, and not just Jews, but those with eyes to see that the Nazis won’t stop at that. The Commies they will shoot and the socialists can expect a holiday in their concentration camps for some gentle education. Thousands are trying to get out, and if the Germans do invade you and I might have to do a bit of business again.’