The Red Ribbon

Book 0: The Irregular

by H.B. Lyle

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

The thrilling follow-up to The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy, featuring Wiggins—an ex-soldier who was trained as a child by Sherlock Holmes.

Now an agent of the newly formed Secret Service, Wiggins is still determined to track down Peter the Painter, the murderer of his friend Bill. Meanwhile Captain Kell is under pressure to identify who is leaking vital information from the government, and his wife, Constance, is getting dangerously close to the more militant faction of suffragettes.

When Wiggins traces one of the old Baker Street Irregulars gang to a mysterious club in Belgravia, the action follows thick and fast in another brilliantly compelling novel of betrayal and suspense.

Release date: August 23, 2018

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

Millicent tried not to hurry.

No one suspected anything, she was sure. But she tried not to hurry. She flicked on the electric light and looked at her face briefly in the silver platter on the kitchen dresser. It would have to do. No time. She left a small package out for Poppy. No one at the Embassy had ever been mean to her exactly, but she couldn’t stay. Not once she’d found out. And there was Harold.

She put her hand to the back door, listened to the cries above for a moment – ecstasy, real and fake. The hinges creaked. She peered along the covered walkway to the back gate, saw no one. It was now or never—

‘Evening, Millie,’ a voice came out of the darkness, soft and sinister.

She hesitated. ‘All right, Big T?’

‘Off out?’

‘My shift’s done. I cleared it with Delphy, check if you like. You?’ Millicent’s voice trembled.

Big T, or Tommy, scratched his chin. Millicent could hear the stubble bristle. Her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and she picked out his long, heavily muscled form leaning against a post, as if he was waiting for her. He wore no hat and he stood still, but his shoulders seemed to twitch and ripple under his shirt. After a moment, he cracked his enormous knuckles and replied.

‘Me? Came for a snout, didn’t I?’

Millicent saw no smokes. She nodded, pulled her handbag close and stepped past him along the walkway. Don’t run. Don’t hurry.

As she reached the back gate, she heard Big T’s muffled voice carrying through the night. ‘Mind how you go,’ he echoed.

She closed the gate behind her, looked left and right, then headed south to Buckingham Palace Road. Don’t hurry. With every step, with each yard she put between herself and the Embassy, her spirits lifted. Never again. The number 11 turned the corner off to her right and she flitted across the road just in time to step onto the plate.

Each advertisement inside offered comfort, normality, a reminder that life existed outside the Embassy. Her eyes flicked along the strips above the windows. DAILY MAIL MILLION SALES. COLEMAN’S MUSTARD. HEINZ 57 VARIETIES. MAKE 1910 SPECIAL WITH WHITE STAR LINES. FOR COUGHS, COLDS AND INFLUENZA, VENO’S LIGHTNING COUGH CURE. She checked and rechecked her bag, jangled the contents. A well-dressed gent in a bowler glared at her sharp. ‘Quiet there, girl.’

She cast her eyes down and stopped fidgeting. Only eighteen but she knew more than the old man would ever know. She let the duffer have his moment, then looked up at her reflection in the glass and recognised something there, something she hadn’t seen in a long time. Hope.

What she did not do was look out of the back of the bus.

She hadn’t had a chance to say her goodbyes, but that could wait. She really only had one anyway, and she could write to Jax at her mum’s taxi hut, when she got the chance.

‘All change, all change,’ the conductor cried as the bus pulled in at Hammersmith. Millicent hoped he was right. He’d promised, her man, dear Harold, her big-tooted lisper. But could it be so easy? Easier than staying at the Embassy, mind.

She set off down Hammersmith Bridge Road, her heart a jumble of nerves and excitement, the Embassy feeling further and further off as she walked. A great sign flapped in the wind: Polling Booth, with a large arrow pointing down a side alley. There was a general election on. It took weeks, and wasn’t due to end until the middle of February. Not that she’d ever have the chance to vote, nor anyone she knew neither, other than dear Harold.

It grew colder as she approached the river. The traffic had thinned. A fine sleet drifted in and out of the street lamps. Up ahead, the bridge. Why did they have to meet here? She wished she’d asked Harold.

The lighting on the bridge was even worse than on the road. A high wind rattled the lamps. She could hear the river ripple and swell beneath her. She stopped, listened, and squinted into the night. Was that a cab? Her hand leapt to the small St Christopher usually hanging around her neck on a red ribbon. Then she remembered she’d left it behind.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, a solitary figure appeared on the bridge, walking towards her very quickly, with purpose.

‘Harry,’ she called, unsure. ‘Harold, is that you?’



Wiggins changed caps. He stuffed the flat cap in his pocket and unfolded a sharply peaked tweed number from his inside pocket, all without breaking stride. His right leg swung round in an awkward limp.

The two men in front of him talked loudly, seemingly unaware of their tail. Wiggins kept his eyes fixed on the taller of the two. He wore a straw boater, set at a jaunty angle, and his side whiskers were a shocking red. At almost six foot, thin and angular, he was a Swan matchstick of a man. His companion, more compact, barrel-chested, wore a three-piece tweed suit despite the warm spring day and strutted along the pavement, shoulders back. The pair pushed through the tourists outside the House of Commons. Wiggins kept pace as they moved into the back streets, away from Millbank and the river. It was emptier here, even in the afternoon, and Wiggins hunched his shoulders and slowed down. The two men showed no sign of being noticed. Yet.

Wiggins’s boss, Captain Vernon Kell, had briefed him that morning. They sat in the apartment on Victoria Street that served as the office of the Secret Service Bureau’s home section. ‘The two men are booked to lunch at Scott’s. Follow them afterwards,’ Kell said.

‘What for?’

Kell looked up sharply. ‘Because I order you to.’ He sighed. ‘I will tell you when you need to know. Is that sufficient?’

Wiggins nodded. It was. After the work he’d been doing for the last six months, following someone through the streets of London felt like a godsend of a task. ‘What if they split?’

‘If they do, you must follow the leader – I’m not sure which it is, so you’ll have to make a judgement.’ Kell fixed him with a stare. ‘But whatever you do, don’t stop them – they are probably armed and definitely dangerous.’

Wiggins kept his face hidden by the cap and limped on. The two men turned into a busier street. Watery sunlight bounced off a pub’s windows. A jeweller’s sign seesawed in the wind. An argument started up ahead, two streetwalkers fighting over scraps. Wiggins flicked his attention away for a second, then pulled his eyes back to his target.

Suddenly, the two men stopped. They pretended to cross the road, then doubled back towards him. Wiggins didn’t break stride. As they neared, he dipped his head still further. Both men held their chins up high. He limped past them and half nodded, in recognition of his lower status. The two men barely batted an eye, although it was quite clear to Wiggins that they were deploying counter-surveillance manouevres.

‘Hold on a sec, Bernie,’ the taller one said in a loud voice. ‘My laces.’

Wiggins ducked into a doorway and listened in. Which wasn’t hard, as both the tall one and his mate spoke in such booming voices that he could have been in the boozer opposite and still heard.

Bernie turned back to his friend. ‘Hurry up, Viv, we’re late.’

Wiggins spirited the pebble out of his shoe, changed his hat once more, and waited for the two men to walk back the way they’d come. They set off again, and Wiggins went after them, hidden behind a nanny pushing a huge pram. He tried to collect his thoughts. They were military, certainly: you could tell that by their bearing, the folds in their clothes, and their shoes.

The shorter man, Bernie, scoped the road behind him once more. Again, Wiggins didn’t break stride. The two men continued onwards. Wiggins cursed. He hadn’t been spotted but they were looking out for him, for someone.

Bernie and Viv (Wiggins couldn’t think of them in any other way now) reached Victoria Street. The main road buzzed with veering motor cars, buses and fast-stepping government types, messenger boys and tourists staring up at Westminster Cathedral. The two men stopped for a moment. Wiggins walked close behind them now, a tight tail in the crush. He knew what was coming and grinned. This was the most exciting thing he’d done in months.

Captain Vernon Kell, head of the Secret Service Bureau’s home division, drummed his fingers on the table and contemplated a glass of milk. He disliked public houses. They never had anything decent to drink, to say nothing of the mixed clientele. The Duke of Cambridge just off Victoria Street was no different.

He sat, as previously arranged, at a table abutting the wooden partition between the lounge bar and the saloon. It was genteel enough on his side of the screen, though the polished oak panels couldn’t shut out the noise from the far more raucous saloon. A glass smashed, a loud cheer followed. At three in the afternoon? Kell looked up at the gap between screen and ceiling, as if the void itself might explain the gulf in class.

‘Good day, Kelly.’

Kell looked across the table. ‘Good day … er … C?’

‘Cunningham. In public.’

‘Sorry,’ Kell muttered.

Sir Mansfield Cumming sat down opposite with a glass of blood-red port and an air of undiluted subterfuge. He undid the button of his jacket and tried to look relaxed.

‘Not drinking?’ he said.

‘I didn’t see a premier cru,’ Kell replied.

‘Hard to trust a man who doesn’t drink,’ Cumming said, as if to himself. The two regarded each other in silence for a moment. Cumming’s brow pinched to an angry point above his eagle nose, and his stiff movements showed his age. Their collaboration hadn’t been a roaring success so far. In the days when they’d first got the commission – Kell to head a home service, Cumming a foreign one – it had seemed like a grand new beginning, a secret service designed to counter the threat from German spies at home, whilst at the same time seeking information about them abroad. A fully funded, flexible and alert Secret Service Bureau for the twentieth century. It hadn’t turned out that way.

They did not get on. Cumming was a high-handed, self-important bore as far as Kell was concerned: obsessed with code names, secret protocols and needless subterfuge. Every time they met, he insisted on being addressed as Cunningham, while he called him Kelly.

Kell sipped his glass of milk. They sat in silence for a moment longer.

‘What time do you expect—’

‘It’s fluid,’ Cumming cut him off. ‘You can’t put a stopwatch in the field.’ He hesitated. ‘But I myself do happen to have an appointment at around four …’

Kell raised an eyebrow. He heard a single tap on the partition by his ear, then a double rap. Cumming didn’t notice. Kell put his glass down heavily. ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I hope we can be of some help.’

Cumming sniffed.

‘I’ve wondered why you haven’t called on us more, to be honest,’ Kell went on.

‘You mean Agent OO?’

Kell nodded. ‘I know that you like to work alone, or at least you don’t like to share your plans. But you must understand, while our work is separate, we stand or fall together. If one of us fails, we both fail.’

‘I hope you’re not telling me how to do my job, Kelly, because if you are—’

‘I am not telling you how to do anything,’ Kell snapped. ‘I am merely pointing out the facts. We are a new service. In the eyes of our masters, we are the sides of the same coin. Our fates are entwined.’

Cumming glared for a moment. ‘I don’t like your Agent OO, if you must know.’

Kell lifted a hand to interrupt, but Cumming sailed on regardless.

‘I simply can’t believe he’s trustworthy. His deductive tricks were quite diverting when you introduced us. And I’m sure he can fight well enough in a street brawl. But I need intelligence on German military activity on the Continent. I need men whom I can trust in a clinch. Would you really trust Agent OO not to be bought off by the Germans? His low-born type respond to money first, and money always.’

Kell tried to interrupt once more but Cumming waved him away.

‘No, no. Gentlemen make the best agents. Men of honour, men of breeding, men of character. This current scenario is the only one when such a man as OO really has any use.’

At that moment, two men of military bearing came into the bar. Cumming stood up and gestured them over. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon.’ Kell rose as Cumming introduced him. ‘This is a good friend, Mr Kelly. Kelly, this is …’

‘Captain Bernard Trench.’ The tall man thrust out his hand.

Cumming stammered. ‘I-I was rather hoping … No matter, this is …’

‘Lieutenant Vivian Brandon. Delighted I’m sure.’

‘Bonfire …’ Cumming muttered. ‘Your code name is Bonfire.’

‘Sorry, still getting the hang of it.’ Brandon didn’t look sorry in the least. They all sat, Brandon and Trench with broad grins written across their faces, every inch young, off-duty military men out for a jolly in town.

Cumming tapped his walking stick on the floor. ‘Were you followed?’

‘Absolutely. Reggie told us it was a training exercise—’

‘Reggie told you?’ Cumming said, appalled.

‘Rather. So we were on the lookout as soon as we left Scott’s.’

Cumming shook his head but gestured for Trench to continue. ‘We were followed by a woman outside Westminster Abbey. A streetwalker. She trailed us into Millbank. Luckily Viv here spotted her, and we doubled back to make sure. She scuttled off as soon as she saw us.’

‘She weren’t a streetwalker.’ A small shutter in the wooden partition by Kell’s shoulder scraped open, and a voice rasped through the hole. ‘And she weren’t following anyone. She was selling flowers for evensong.’ Wiggins glugged at his beer audibly.

‘Who the devil’s that?’ Trench snapped from across the table. ‘Show your face!’

‘He’s the man who followed you from Scott’s,’ Kell said.

‘Damned sneak,’ Brandon exclaimed.

‘And don’t ever try to look at your tail – you’s just telling them you know you’re being followed, giving gen away for nothing.’

Trench turned to Cumming. ‘How dare he speak to us this way. I can barely understand a word, to be honest, but I simply refuse to be addressed so.’

‘Steady,’ Cumming said. ‘This was the exercise. It’s OO.’

‘It’s outrageous. He’s … drinking in a saloon bar. A sneak, I tell you. I’m an officer and a gentleman.’

Kell sighed and looked at Cumming. The older man raised his hand to silence Trench and hunched over the table.

‘Look here, Kelly, is there anything your man could tell us here and now? Advice?’

‘You could ask him yourself – he can hear, you know.’

Cumming pursed his tight lips, glaring at Kell as he spoke. ‘Any advice for men in foreign climes?’

‘What climes?’ Wiggins answered.

Cumming growled. ‘Tiaria,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t say more.’

‘Do they have the death penalty there?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then don’t send them.’

Brandon slapped his hand on the table. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Come on,’ Kell hissed through the screen.

‘You’s just sending them to the grave,’ Wiggins persisted.

Kell rapped the partition with his stick.

Wiggins sighed theatrically. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘these jokers could be in training for months—’

‘I say …’

‘—and still not know their arse from their elbow.’

‘Please,’ Kell interjected quickly, glancing at Brandon and Trench. He bent to the partition. ‘Anything you can say in a few short, preferably non-obscene words. Which might help?’

More glugging. Cumming rattled his glass on the table, impatient. ‘How should we get information out? Documents.’

‘Does, er, Tiaria have the post?’

‘As good as ours, I’m told.’

‘Then post it.’

‘Oh, this is ridiculous. Should we address it to the Admiralty?’ Trench scoffed.

‘Post it to a box somewhere else in … Tiaria … then forward it on later. It’s a cutout.’

‘Hmm, I see,’ Kell nodded.

Wiggins went on. ‘But same rules using the post as anything else – keep consistent with the cover.’

‘This is stuff and nonsense,’ Brandon said. ‘I can hardly make out a word the man says.’

‘He means,’ Kell said slowly, ‘that whenever you use the postal system, send another letter at the same time – a letter that is consistent with your cover story.’

‘Handwrite one envelope – the neutral – type the other,’ Wiggins finished.

Cumming nodded at Kell slowly. ‘In case you are being watched.’

‘Zackly.’

‘Yes, yes, I see. The Ger— er … the TRs would search the post and find the handwritten letter, but not the treasure.’

‘Is this all really necessary?’ Brandon piped in. ‘We’re due at the Army and Navy stores at four – we need to get our kit.’

‘Of course. Thank you, Kelly, for the advice,’ Cumming said.

‘Much obliged, I’m sure,’ Trench added through reed-thin lips.

Kell nodded. No one thanked Wiggins. Cumming got up, as did Brandon and Trench.

‘One more thing,’ Wiggins echoed through the shutter. ‘Bernie and Viv here …’

‘How does he know our names?’ Brandon said, to no one.

‘They should play up the couple. Act like that’s what they’re hiding.’

Brandon turned to Trench. ‘What does he mean?’ Trench ignored him, but his cheeks had begun to redden. He clenched his fists.

Wiggins carried on. ‘Then it will make sense, if they’re acting a bit dodge like. I mean, anyone would think these two are au fait, if you get the drift.’

Brandon didn’t. Trench, on the other hand, had gone a deep purple. A vein throbbed in his temple. Kell coughed. Cumming stuttered, ‘Ah, well, yes. Gentlemen, shall we—’

‘Scoundrel!’ Trench cried and leapt across the table. He ripped open the shutter, ‘How dare he …’

Wiggins was gone. All that remained was a foam-licked glass, glistening wet, empty.

Brandon scowled at Kell. ‘Keep your … man … away from us.’

Kell pulled on his gloves carefully. ‘As you wish,’ he said finally and got up. ‘But ignore his advice at your peril. He is the finest man in the Service. And if you’re going where I think you’re going, then you’ll need every ounce of help you can get. Your lives depend on it. Good day, Cunni— oh, Cumming. Gentlemen.’ He planted his hat on his head, tipped it slightly and left the three men standing around the table, confused, outraged and affronted.

Kell turned right out of the pub and crossed the road to an apartment building on Victoria Street. A squadron of pigeons swooped past the bell tower of Westminster Cathedral. Kell watched as one of the birds, unquestionably white despite a mottling of soot, dipped beneath the others and disappeared, alone.

‘Any messages, Simpkins?’ he called out as he entered the hallway of the fourth-floor flat that served as his office and HQ.

He heard the clerk scrape back his chair, garble something through a stuffed mouth, and then break a teacup. ‘Coming, sir.’

Kell turned to his office and pulled the only key from his pocket. He unlocked the door and stepped into the room.

Wiggins sat at Kell’s desk, feet up, waiting for his boss.

Kell stopped the curse on his lips and instead, despite his better judgement, couldn’t help but say, ‘How do you do that?’

Wiggins swung his legs to the floor and sprang up. ‘What was the point of all that, then?’

Kell said nothing. He took his coat, hat and gloves off carefully, eyeing Wiggins all the time. His agent prowled around the room, picking up objects at random, placing them down, moving on.

‘He sending them jokers to Germany?’ Wiggins said at last.

‘Tiaria, Cumming calls it.’

Wiggins rolled his eyes. Kell sat down at his desk and removed his glasses. ‘I understand your frustration.’

‘You think them’ll track Van Bork?’ Wiggins said.

‘I doubt they even know he exists.’ Kell replaced his glasses. ‘Listen. The work you’ve done here in England is exceptional. Together we’ve identified a number of potential German spies—’

‘Small fry!’

‘Who nevertheless will need to be arrested in the event of war. There’s Helm in Portsmouth, Leitner in Chatham, Sternberg in Sunderland.’ As he reeled off this list, Kell pointed to his elaborate filing system of Roneo cards. ‘You found them all.’

‘Nobodies,’ Wiggins said. ‘And we got no proof they are spies, only that they might be when the time comes. We’s still missing the big wheel.’

This was true. The year before, Wiggins had helped Kell break up a spy ring, a success that had led to the creation of the Secret Service Bureau itself. As head of the home section, Kell had been given the express task of rooting out German spies on British soil. But Wiggins and he had failed to find the German kingpin behind the spies, a man known to them only as ‘Van Bork’.

‘We’ve done what we could for the moment,’ Kell said. Wiggins had staked out the German Embassy for months, but had found no leads relating to Van Bork. ‘Besides,’ Kell went on, ‘we don’t even know what he looks like, no small thanks to you. If you hadn’t let our one witness go, we might have had a decent shot.’

Wiggins scowled. Kell didn’t know the whole story, but he’d guessed Wiggins had been romantically involved with a Latvian woman who’d turned out to be an agent provocateur working for Van Bork. The woman had fled the country, and Wiggins hadn’t lifted a finger to stop her.

‘Send me to Germany,’ Wiggins said at last. ‘I’ll find him, I’ll find Van Bork.’

‘You? Oh yes, I can quite see that. A slovenly dressed guttersnipe without a word of German, swanning around the salons of Berlin? You can barely speak intelligible English, man, you’re a street urchin grown up, not some diplomatic lounge lizard. Sherlock Holmes may have taught you, but we both know you’d stick out like a sore thumb anywhere other than the streets, amongst your own class.’

Wiggins glowered at him. Kell reached for a cigarette and looked away. He fiddled with a match, then ribboned smoke into the air and went on. ‘I know you feel guilty about the boy in Woolwich. But you didn’t plunge the knife, Van Bork’s men did.’

‘I’d have a better chance of getting him than Bernie and bloody Viv,’ Wiggins replied.

Kell shook his head. ‘Firstly, we don’t even know if he is in Germany. If he sticks to his guns, then I presume he’s still operating here at least some of the time. We must wait.’

‘For what?’

‘He will show himself again, I know it. We have to be ready to recognise him when he does.’ Kell stubbed out his smoke and fixed Wiggins with a stare. ‘Secondly, it’s not our business chasing spies in Germany. We operate here. We leave the foreign stuff to Cumming. If he asks for our help, well then …’

‘Is that what you brought me back for? Teaching them toffee jokers to wipe their own arses?’

Kell winced. ‘I had hopes for a spy school.’

‘Them’ll never listen to the likes of me.’

Kell nodded slowly. Wiggins had a point. Cumming had made it clear he only wanted agents of impeccable lineage, Oxbridge, Sandhurst types. And they wouldn’t listen to Wiggins – a mistake that could cost them their lives. ‘As it happens, I did bring you back to London for something else. The King’s funeral.’

‘The King’s dead? No one told me.’

Kell tutted. ‘Not yet, but he’ll go soon. And we’re to help with the security.’

‘You asking me to wait around for someone to die?’ Wiggins grinned, disbelieving.

The telephone rang, startling them both. ‘Simpkins,’ Kell called. ‘The telephone.’

Wiggins pulled his cap from his pocket. ‘I’ll be back tomorra. For orders,’ he said.

Simpkins scuttled into the room, pausing briefly at the sight of Wiggins. He reached for the telephone and looked up at Kell. ‘It might be your wife, sir.’

‘I know.’

As the secretary took the call, Wiggins hesitated, a worried look crossing his face. Kell gestured vaguely with his hand and Wiggins strode to the door.

Simpkins gave Kell the message. ‘It’s the Cabinet Office, sir. Secretary Pears. He wants to see you at once.’

‘Oi, that’s my snag.’

‘Says who?

‘Says this!’ A punch flew.

Wiggins stepped past the two lads as they closed in a violent scuffle. Behind them, a reporter turned away and called for another boy.

He was in the alleyway next to the Cheshire Cheese pub. Wiggins pushed his way through a gaggle of boys who crowded around the entrance like a colony of birds on the edge of a cliff, flitting to and fro nervously.

The place was rammed, printers on one side, pressmen on the other. It was the best pub on Fleet Street, and everyone knew it. Wiggins went into the public bar. It stank of printers’ Woodbines, press ringers’ pipe smoke and cheap whisky. It stank of ink and sweat and unwashed clothes. It stank of home. After months away, Wiggins savoured London’s stale air, the glorious sounds of a City boozer, swearing, joking, spilt beer and no one giving a toss who you were, or why.

He ordered a pint of half-and-half, took a long gulp, then stuck his head into the alley outside. ‘A general for a day’s tail,’ Wiggins called.

Fourteen hands shot up in unison.

‘’Ere ya are, guv.’ ‘Experienced, me.’ ‘I do MailExpressEvening News.’ ‘Liar.’

Wiggins paused as the boys horseshoed around him. Most were aged between twelve and seventeen, Wiggins reckoned; hard to tell exactly because no one had a scrap on them. All bones and baggy trousers. These were the runners on the lookout for a job, or ‘snag’. Employed freelance by the newspapers, they did all sorts (following celebrities, running errands and the like) that the reporters didn’t have time for. Those pints in the Cheese wouldn’t drink themselves.

Wiggins made a show of scanning all the eager faces, the sharp, bright eyes like mirrors. Then he thrust out his hand, pointing beyond the crowd around him to a solitary figure who hadn’t moved. ‘You’ll do,’ he said.

The figure, who until that moment had lounged against the railings, shrugged and the rest dispersed, muttering darkly.

‘He don’t want it anyway.’ ‘It’s a gyp.’ ‘Fucking ponce, is he?’

Wiggins waited. The skinny figure, dressed like the other boys but if possible even slighter, slunk towards him.

‘Jax,’ Wiggins said quietly.

‘I’m Jack here,’ she hissed under her breath.

Jax was the daughter of Wiggins’s oldest friend, Sal, and they’d run into each other the year before when Jax had been inadvertently working for a spy ring. Wiggins had helped her out of that scrape, but she’d kept running – and kept up pretending to be a boy. He didn’t blame her for that.

He finished his pint and was about to say more when a great commotion swept through the ranks of runners. First one, then two, then more messengers came hurtling down the alleyway and barrelled into the Cheese. Moments later, the pub emptied of reporters. They came bolting out one at a time, screaming for runners.

‘What’s up?’ Wiggins said.

‘King’s all in. He’s about to snuff it.’

The runners pegged off one by one, despatched westwards by the inebriated newspaper men – to Clarence House, Buckingham Palace, Whitehall. The papers needed eyes everywhere, and the runners were cheaper than dust.

Jax looked on longingly at all this work going begging. ‘Oi, mister, I can do Downing Street,’ she called to a harried newsman, who glanced up at Wiggins.

‘He can’t,’ Wiggins said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

‘Ignore him, mister. I’m raring.’

But the reporter had already engaged another boy. Jax slumped back, upset. ‘Still gotta work, ain’t I?’

‘What do you mean still?’

‘I’m on a missing persons, but it don’t pay.’

Wind whipped stray biscuit wrappers and dust in little eddies about them, the alleyway now deserted. Even the clinking glasses and roar of chat from the Cheese had quietened. The King’s imminent death was big news.

Wiggins looked closely at Jax’s face. He stilled an impulse to brush the tears from her cheek. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay you.’

‘It’s not …’ She sniffed.

‘What missing person? You a consulting detective now?’

‘Don’t laugh at me.’

Wiggins patted her shoulder. ‘Come on, girl, what’s up?’

Jax sniffed again. She pulled herself up straighter and began to talk in her proper voice – higher, not quite as barked. ‘My mate Millie. Ain’t seen her for months – she ain’t home neither.’

‘She your age, seventeen? A few months, that’s nothing.’

She looked at him. ‘She would’ve said. She’s disappeared.’

Wiggins cracked his fingers and examined the backs of his hands. Soft. Hadn’t been this soft since for ever, now he didn’t have to work for a living. Not real work anyway. ‘Anything on Peter?’

‘Who?’

‘Jax. I have been paying you something, remember.’

‘I tell ya, I’m on a missing persons. And you paid me ’alf a crown. Once. That’s sod all.’

Wiggins took her by both shoulders and fixed her with a glare. ‘Where is Peter?’

Jax shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I tried, but no word, not at Jubilee Street, none of the dives you told me. He’s gone.’

‘I paid you more than ’alf a crown,’ Wiggins said.

She rounded on him. ‘Why don’tcha find your precious Rooski yourself?’

‘I’m known,’ he said. And I’m dead, he did not add.

‘Why the hell you care, anyway?’