Chapter 45
Cook left the couple with their grief. They had questions he didn’t have the answers to. Half pretending not to believe him. Pretending to themselves.
There was a smell of autumn in the air, a smell Cook associated with the fields and the woods.
Even here, in the heart of the city, brown leaves crunched underfoot.
There was a chill in the air, and a softness in the light.
Soon it would be Michaelmas, the start of the farming year.
Normally Cook would be making plans with Bill Taylor, his farm manager, laying out this year’s plan.
Contracts with the working men to be renewed, hiring to be done.
This year was different. Some things remained – the fields still had to be ploughed, crops sown, plans made.
But most of the labourers were gone – the first of them had volunteered, then conscription had taken many more.
Farming was a reserved occupation, meaning many of the men could have got out of their service, but most wanted to do their bit, as Cook had done when it was his time.
There was a bus waiting at the stop. Perhaps the driver recognised Cook from the outbound journey.
Cook shook his head when the conductor waved at him, and the bus pulled away.
Cook needed to think. He thought best when he was sitting in a pub, sipping a pint.
Second to that, when he was walking. He’d be in a pub soon enough, so for now he walked.
He had the book of maps in his pocket, but he didn’t need it.
A column of black smoke rose up from the docks, and as the sky darkened in the early evening, Cook could see an orange glow from a fresh crop of fires.
Cook walked, and thought. About a smoldering bus, reduced to fragments of steel.
About a girl, running from the tea shop, eager to get home, to her mother and father.
About another girl, one who’d escaped the tenements and the canyon-like alleys of the island, who’d got a job up West, but who’d stopped showing up.
A girl who’d lied to her family, setting off each morning dressed in her waitress uniform.
None of it was Cook’s business. He’d tell Gracie his suspicions – that Ruby hadn’t been on the bus, that she was therefore most likely alive. The rest was between a mother and her daughter. Cook had plenty to do. A farming year to prepare for. Men to hire. Crops to get in the ground.
He crossed onto the island at the far end, over the drawbridge that had been lowered at his insistence when he’d thought the ARP man had been responsible for Frankie’s death. The bridge keeper was stripped to his waist, arms deep into the engine that drove the mechanism. He glared as Cook passed.
After the bridge, the road bent sharply to the right, adhering to a curve in the river on the far side of the warehouses. There was a pub squeezed in on the corner. The World’s End, a faded sign proclaimed, a picture of a sailing clipper, all sails billowing, sailing into a red sun.
A hundred yards along the high street, another interruption to the otherwise monolithic wall of warehouses.
A pawnbroker, brass balls entirely blackened by smoke.
The window had been cleared of grime – the shopkeeper anxious to let everyone know he was still in business.
Probably busier than usual, with half the population of the island needing cash to replace things lost in the bombing.
The window was filled with everything an islander might own – a composite picture of a life amongst the warehouses.
Sunday-best suits alongside workers’ overalls.
Baling hooks. Frying pans of varying sizes and condition.
A candelabra, no doubt a space left on a mantelpiece in an unused front parlour.
And a clock. An ugly clock, carved mahogany, a souvenir from the Black Forest. A clock that had been taken from Gracie’s pub.
The bell tinkled as Cook opened the door.
The space inside the pawnbroker’s shop was as cluttered as the window display.
Shelves on every wall were crammed with bric-a-brac, none of it of any value to anyone other than its owner.
This wasn’t the sort of place a stranger would step in and make a purchase – the items were simply held as security against a high-interest loan made to their owner, designed to be repaid the next payday.
There was a man behind the counter.
‘I’m here for the clock,’ Cook said.
The man had a ledger opened in front of him, as large as a newspaper. He ran his finger down the most recent entries until he found what he was looking for.
‘Half a crown,’ he said.
Cook had enough money in his pocket. Paying the man would be the shortest way to resolve the situation. He could return the clock to Gracie, tell her his news about Ruby. The all-round conquering hero. She’d give him another free pint.
But paying for something that had been stolen didn’t sit right with Cook.
Especially something stolen during an enemy raid.
Looting was punishable by death for a reason.
It was the thin end of the wedge. Let people think the rules of law no longer applied and you’d already lost, invasion or no invasion.
‘I’m not here to pay for it,’ Cook said. ‘I’m here to take it back. It was stolen.’
The man behind the counter stared at him. A man used to every kind of approach, from begging to threatening. He’d have a weapon close to hand, and he’d be willing to use it.
Cook turned his back on the man and reached into the window display. He picked up the clock. It was even uglier than he’d remembered. A small brass plaque on the back:
With Regards
9 September 1928
‘I could let you take it,’ the man behind the counter said, ‘only I’ve got no guarantee you represent the rightful owner. I could be abetting a further theft. Compounding the error, you might say.’
Cook turned back to the man, and found himself facing the barrel of a tommygun.
A fine weapon, imported from America. An automatic rifle, capable of firing twenty rounds per second from its drum-shaped magazine.
Designed, too late, for use in the trenches.
First shipments from the Thompson factory went out on Armistice Day, which meant a glut on the market at a time when governments and armies had no need for more weapons.
Subsequently, a favourite of organised crime organisations, who needed something easy to use and reliable, and American police forces alike, if the Hollywood prop masters were getting their details right.
All things considered, the ‘trench sweeper’ was overkill for an encounter with a single unarmed assailant in a small, enclosed space.
Cook felt a grudging respect for his adversary.
The gun was a clear statement of intent.
No messing around with threats of broken legs, or telephone calls to the powers that be.
It presumably worked wonders on belligerent dock-workers who wanted to argue about the price offered for a pair of boots or a baling hook.
But Cook wasn’t a dock worker. There’d been a time when he would have been intimidated by a man standing four feet away from him, pointing a three-foot-long gun in his direction.
But that very natural reaction had been anticipated by the men who’d trained Cook, who’d drilled the correct response into him until it was instinct, and who’d sent him out to use his training in the mountains above the Khyber Pass.
‘You’re going to murder a man over half a crown?’ Cook asked, taking a step towards the counter, bringing the gun into arm’s reach.
The man didn’t answer. He allowed his eyes to flick past Cook, over his shoulder, to the door. Some kind of cavalry on its way. An alarm triggered.
‘You’re going to get yourself killed over half a crown?’ the man asked.
‘You got it set to full automatic?’ Cook asked. ‘Make sure you hold it down as you fire, otherwise it’ll creep up. You’ll fire two rounds into me and a hundred and ninety-eight over my head, into whoever’s across the road, having their tea.’
‘You’ll be just as dead,’ the man said.
‘I’m thinking about your neighbours,’ Cook said. ‘My life’s not worth much. More than half a crown, but that’s for me to worry about. But I can’t let you fire that gun into the street.’
The doorbell tinkled behind Cook. The cavalry had arrived.
Must have been close by. A tactical error on their part.
The shop was small and narrow. Whoever came through the door would find themselves standing behind Cook – a straight line between the gun, Cook, and the newcomer.
If the gun fired, everyone in front of it would be dead.
Cook knew of two ways to deal with a long gun pointed at you from a frontal position.
Left hand or right hand. Sweep the barrel away, then twist to the side.
Grab the arm holding the gun, then put an elbow into your assailant’s face, aiming for the chin but an eye or a cheekbone worked just as well.
The only decision was which hand to use.
Cook’s left arm was already spoken for, cradling the ugly clock.
Which cut down on decision-making time. His right hand was the only one available, so it was the one he used.
He stepped towards the gun, batting the barrel away to his left, while pivoting his body in the same direction.
Once he was side-on to the counter, he jabbed the man’s chin with his right elbow – jarring for Cook but much worse for the recipient.
Like being hit with a metal bar, definite damage to the teeth and jaw.
Concussion likely. Momentary knock-out almost always the result.
The tommygun clattered to the counter as the man went down.
Cook reached forward and guided the man’s head away from the edge of the counter.
He’d already inflicted life-altering damage.
Anything worse seemed out of proportion.
Cook had been taught time and again that combat wasn’t cricket, but he’d seen enough killing. Seen enough, and done enough.
The bell above the door jingled again, a second visitor, just as Cook was guiding the man into a crumpled heap on the floor behind the counter.
‘What’s this?’ Cook recognised the voice. It was Reynolds. Frankie’s father.
Cook turned to face him. Reynolds was flanked by another man. Two jingles from the doorbell – two men. Everything accounted for. Both Reynolds and his man had their right hands in their pockets, ready to produce weapons should the need arise.
Cook raised the clock, held in the crook of his left arm.
‘This got misplaced,’ Cook said. ‘Thought I’d return it.’
‘That was here?’ Frankie’s father asked.
‘Was being the operative word,’ Cook said.
Frankie’s father looked angry. He whispered something to his man, who shook his head. Cook recognised the situation. When your boss is angry, and he asks if you’ve got anything to do with it, denial is always the best response.
‘A mistake, no doubt,’ Frankie’s father said. He pulled a sheaf of banknotes from his pocket, peeled off a pound.
‘Let me,’ he said, proffering the money.
‘No need,’ Cook replied. ‘We resolved the dispute without money changing hands.’
Frankie’s father stepped forward and looked over the counter. He looked back at Cook.
‘Looks like you’ve saved me the trouble,’ he said. ‘Lee should have known better than to take that. Everyone on the island knows it’s Gracie’s.’
Frankie’s father made a gesture to his man, and he left hurriedly, the doorbell clanging behind him.
‘How’s she doing? About Ruby?’ Frankie’s father asked. ‘Must be taking it hard.’