“You... y-you could?”
“No promises, mind you. But if you tell us the truth, then I could help you, yes.” He stubbed out his smoke, swiped back his hair, and leaned across so that he was only inches from Lonzo. “What was his name?”
“Ch-Charlie. Charlie Matters.”
“Where is he?”
“Dunno. His gran died and he had to leave his flat in Bethnal Green.”
“Parents?”
“Dead.”
“And you have no idea where he is now?”
Lonzo shook his head. “No, guv. I swear.”
Willoughby took out a notepad and pen. “Describe him.”
Lonzo did so. “C-can you still help me?”
Willoughby finished writing and looked up. “You’ve really told me nothing helpful, Lonzo. Lots of boys like Charlie in this city. Does he go to school?”
“No.”
“Does he have any other family?”
Lonzo shook his head. “Dunno.”
Willoughby grabbed one of the boy’s hands and twisted Lonzo’s index finger until it broke. Lonzo howled in pain.
“Don’t lie to me, boy, you won’t like it.”
He let go of Lonzo’s hand and the boy jerked back, holding his damaged finger.
Lonzo wailed, “He ain’t got no family, I swear. His gran was all he had, and she died. They buried her over in Stepney. At the church.”
“What were you doing breaking into a shop? And why that shop?”
Lonzo swallowed and looked down at the table. Out of his one good eye he watched for the constable sneaking up on him again. “We heard it had some money in the till.”
“How did you hear that?”
“Just did.”
Willoughby pointed to the door. “When we walk out of here and you get picked out of the identity parade, the next stop for you will be prison. And they will hang you.”
“I never saw that lorry till it ’it Eddie. I swear. Didn’t mean to ’urt nobody.”
“The law doesn’t care what you meant, Lonzo. It only cares about what you did. Now, I’ll ask you one more time. Why that bookshop?”
Lonzo gazed warily at the constable, who had now taken a step forward, holding his wooden club and tapping it menacingly against one wide palm.
“Ch-Charlie knew ’bout it. He stole from the bloke before, but the git took the money back.”
Willoughby’s brows knitted in confusion. “Wait, are you saying this Charlie Matters took the money he stole back? Why the devil would he do that, boy? You taking the mickey with me? I don’t like that.”
“He said the bloke had it bad and needed the quid. But Charlie had a book that got no writin’ in it. He got it from the shop. Said he was goin’ to sell it.”
“Did he?” barked Willoughby.
Lonzo was not about to add the theft of the book to his list of crimes. “Got no way of knowin’ that, do I?”
“Bollocks!” exclaimed Willoughby as he nodded at the bobby.
A punishing strike landed on the back of Lonzo’s head from the constable’s club, which once more knocked Lonzo to the floor. His head bleeding badly, Lonzo threw up on the floor.
Willoughby cried out, “Jesus, boy, get a hold of yourself. You were going to join the army? By God, you would have lasted all of ten minutes against the Germans. Now get back in your chair before the constable is forced to ‘help’ you.”
Willoughby drummed his fingers against the table and waited while Lonzo picked himself up off the floor and sobbed quietly into the wood of the table.
“You said he got the book from the shop. Did he steal it?”
“He said he bought it with the shillin’s he stole from the shop. But that were a lie ’cause he give the money back.”
“So did he nick it, then?” persisted the detective inspector.
“Dunno. But he didn’t want us to go round to the shop. He tried to stop us. Maybe he was a friend ’a the bloke’s.”
Willoughby glanced at his notebook. “This Ignatius Oliver?”
Lonzo rubbed his damaged nose and touched the wound on the back of his head. His fingers came back all sticky with his blood. “Dunno, maybe. But Charlie ain’t want us to steal from him, I can tell you that.”
Willoughby sat back and thought this over. “Okay, Lonzo Rossi, the foreigner, that will be all.”
Lonzo peeked up at the man. “C-can... can I go now, guv? I... I wanted to join up, fight the Jerries, see?”
The detective inspector looked at him incredulously. “The only place you’re going is to prison.”
“But you said—”
“A constable has died,” interjected Willoughby. “While this country was at war and needing every able-bodied man in either a policeman’s or a soldier’s uniform. And you and this Charlie Matters as good as killed him. If I have any say in it, and I do, you and he will grow old and gray in prison. That is unless they hang you, which would be my preference.”
Lonzo started to blubber and Willoughby impatiently waved at the constable to drag him away.
When Willoughby was alone, the man had one overriding thought: to find this lad, Charlie Matters. And he knew just the place to start searching.
Tomorrow he would head to Covent Garden. To The Book Keep.
Nurse Auxiliary
The whiskered, aproned man in the chemist’s shop politely declined Molly’s offer to mix the powders, but commended her proper English spirit in trying to do her part in the midst of a global conflict.
“And you tell your mum I said so,” he added in an encouraging tone.
I wish I could, thought Molly.
She trudged down the street feeling dirty and unkempt. She had searched through Imogen’s old clothes, as Oliver had suggested, only to find them full of mold and mildew from water leaks in the flat. So she had sponged her clothes as best she could, and used a few articles of Imogen’s to shape her hair and clean her face and the rest of her body. But her shoes were stained and her stockings were beginning to droop and her hat had been squished in on one side, what with all the jostling in the Underground that night.
Two more chemist’s shops rejected her request, and neither was nearly as gracious about it as the first. The last fellow actually accused Molly of wasting his time while playing an obvious joke on him before sending her off with a flea in her ear.
“Get on with you before I say something you won’t soon forget, missy. Don’t you know there’s a bloody war going on? A belt to your shins would be the ticket if you were my daughter.”
She tried other places, shops and markets and emporiums and cafes and anywhere else that had a POSITION NEEDED sign. But the folks inside always found some reason to deny her employment. Perhaps it was her age, or her clothes — which were, though a bit grimy now, evidently once costly. They might be saving the jobs for those who they believed truly needed them, she thought.
Even though I truly do.
She had been about to give up when she saw a sign and wondered how she had missed it: COVENT GARDEN MEDICAL CLINIC BRANCH.
It was posted outside of a brick building with one door and four windows facing the street. She peered in one of the windows and saw beds with sick and injured people lying in them, and nurses in skirts, capes, and hats rushing around with bottles and trays and anxious looks.
Then, when she drew away from the window and stepped inside the small vestibule, Molly saw the placard: NURSE AUXILIARIES NEEDED. INQUIRE WITHIN.
She squared her shoulders, righted her dented hat, gripped the door handle, and prepared herself to inquire within.
Molly was met by a slim nurse in a dark pleated skirt and white rubber-soled shoes. Thick worry lines etched her forehead.