“You don’t have to go, you know,” she told him, reaching out for him. “Not straight away, anyhow.”
“I’m sorry, it’s something I have to do.”
“Couldn’t we have a rest first? You and me? This bed’s ever so comfortable.”
Josh put on a clean blue checkered shirt. “Petty … I like you. Believe me, I really like you a whole lot. But this is a matter of life and death.”
“So where are you going?”
“It’s safer for you if you don’t know. Really.”
“Those geezers in the hoods aren’t coming after you, are they?”
“I don’t know. But whatever happens, you haven’t seen me, and you don’t know where I’ve gone.”
She lay back on the bed, twisting her hair around her finger, and giving him a coquettish look that reminded Josh of a 1940s movie star. “Sure I can’t tempt you?”
It took him only ten minutes to walk to Ella’s flat. A gritty wind blew newspapers across the streets of Earl’s Court. He pressed the doorbell again and again but there was no reply. He clenched his fist and thumped the door frame in frustration. This was a time when he really needed some support. More than that, he desperately needed some insight into what the Hooded Men might be thinking of doing next.
He gave the doorbell one last, long ring, in case Ella had taken one of her own sleeping potions. He still had his thumb on the bellpush when Abraxas came hobbling around the corner.
“Abraxas! What are you doing out here, boy? Where’s your mom?”
Abraxas came up to him and Josh hunkered down on the sidewalk and took hold of his ears and stroked him. He was streaked with dirt and his eyes were dull. He had lost weight, too. Josh reckoned that he hadn’t been properly fed for three or four days.
“Where’s your mom, Abraxas? Where’s Ella? She hasn’t left you, has she? She wouldn’t do that.”
At that moment, the front door to the apartment building opened and a tall middle-aged woman came out, carrying a Harrods shopping bag.
“Oh, that poor dog!” she exclaimed. “He’s been hanging around for three days now. I’ve called the RSPCA twice, but when they arrive he’s never here. I feel so sorry for him.”
“Where’s his mistress?”
“Why, she’s dead. Didn’t you read about it in the papers?”
“Dead?” Josh felt a sensation in the pit of his stomach like dropping fifty feet in an airplane. “When was this? What happened?”
“It was quite awful. She fell out of the window of her flat and landed right on the railings. I’m so glad I wasn’t here when it happened. And a man friend of hers was stabbed right here in the hallway. I almost decided to move out. I still would, if I could find a decent flat around here for the same sort of rent.”
Josh kept on stroking Abraxas’ head and looking directly into his eyes. “You must be grieving, boy. You must be feeling your loss so bad.”
Abraxas came up closer and rested his chin on Josh’s knee and looked up at him with his sad amber eyes. “You certainly have a way with animals,” the woman remarked.
“I’ll take him and get him cleaned up,” said Josh. “He needs some emotional care, too. He’s going to be feeling very confused about Ella disappearing so suddenly.”
“I’ve got the number of the RSPCA if you want it.”
“That’s OK. Right now, the last thing he needs is a kennel, with a whole lot of other distressed dogs. He needs calm. He needs reassurance.”
He walked back toward the hotel with Abraxas gamely limping after him. The woman watched him go, slowly shaking her head.
Petty watched Abraxas wolfing down a bowl of milk and dog biscuits and shook her head. “Looks like you’re picking up all the waifs and strays, doesn’t it?”
“I couldn’t leave him wandering the streets like that.”
“So what are you going to do with him? You can’t keep him here, can you? And if you’re going away tomorrow, don’t expect me to look after him. I don’t like dogs.”
“Look, I’ll take him with me, if I have to.”
“That’s all right, then.” She lit a cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke. “So you’re going to be staying here tonight, after all?”
“I’ll have to, won’t I, now that my friend’s been killed.” “Well, don’t expect any hanky-panky. Not with that dog in the room.”
Josh couldn’t help smiling. He was exhausted and he couldn’t think about anything else but Nancy, caught by the Hooded Men – but he was still amused by Petty’s unshakable conviction that men were only interested in one thing. Hanky-panky? he thought. You wish.
It was another gusty day, and Josh had difficulty in lighting the candles. Abraxas stood beside him, patiently panting. Josh had made a lead for him out of a suitcase strap. One or two passers-by stopped to watch him, and one old woman asked him if he was making a shrine.
He told her yes; and in a way he was. This niche in the wall was a shrine to Julia, and to Ella, and all of those who had been killed or tortured at the hands of the Hoodies.
At last the candles were burning strongly. Josh hefted Abraxas up in his arms and recited the words of the Mother Goose rhyme. There was hardly anybody around – only a girl with a basket of sandwiches walking up from Carey Street – and so he stepped over the candles and into the niche. Abraxas barked three or four times as they turned the corner out of this Star Yard and made their way through the passageway.
The other Star Yard was almost deserted. Josh peered around the corner of the niche, to make sure that there were no Hoodies or Watchers waiting for him. Then he tugged at Abraxas’ lead and said, “Come on, boy. Let’s go find Nancy.”
He had almost reached Carey Street when a hand seized his left shoulder. “’Ere! Don’t go beetling off! I’ve been waiting for you for days!”
It was Simon Cutter, although Josh could hardly recognize him. His face was swollen and scratched, both his eyes were black, and his two front teeth were missing. His right arm was wrapped in filthy bandages and held up in a sling. His long coat was covered in mud and straw and the lining dragged along the paving stones.
“God almighty, what happened to you?” Josh asked him.
“The Hoodies gave me a going-over, didn’t they? They wanted to know all about John Farbelow and the rest of his subversives. They wanted to know all about you.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them nothing. What could I tell them, I didn’t know nothing. They were going to scrag me, and then they were going to transport me, but in the end the reeve said that since I’d lost my hook and feeler, that was punishment enough.”
“Where’s Nancy?”
Simon took hold of Josh’s arm and pulled him back up Star Yard. “I heard from one of my street arabs that they took her to the Puritan Martyrs Hospital in the City. That’s not a hospital for sick people, guvnor. It used to be a plague hospital, so they say, but it’s closed these days. The windows are always lit up at night, and there’s coming and going, but nobody ever says what goes on there.”
“Can we get in there, do you think?”
“Why do you think I sent you that note? It so happens that I know a lad who works in the kitchens at the Puritan Martyrs. Me and him used to do a little business together. Leather goods.” He hesitated for a second, and then he added, “Wallets, purses, that kind of thing. He can let us in through the scullery, ten o’clock sharp.”
“OK … do you know someplace we can stay until then?”
“There’s a room up over the Old Cat & Ninepence. We can use that.”
The Old Cat & Ninepence was a seventeenth-century pub wedged in the corner of Gough Square, between two glass and concrete office buildings. Outside, it was tile-hung, with a crazily tilting chimney. Inside it was all dark paneling and tobacco-stained plaster, and the ceiling beams were so low that Josh had to duck his head as they went in through the front door.