Chapter 46
Cook followed Reynolds across the road, back to the pub he’d passed.
The World’s End. It was crowded, the air thick with smoke.
Reynolds had a corner table. Two beers, half drunk, claimed the places, and when Reynolds sat down he sipped from one of the glasses.
Cook wondered how he’d been alerted about the trouble across the road.
A boy, running in with the news? A telegraph?
And what did that make the man sitting across from him?
Was Reynolds some kind of enforcer? The way he’d taken control in the pawnshop, Cook thought that unlikely. More likely an owner.
A barmaid brought Cook a pint, and Reynolds nodded to the remaining chair. Cook sat, checking his surroundings. He didn’t like being forced to sit with his back to the crowd.
‘I don’t think Ruby was on that bus,’ Cook said.
‘Say more.’
So Cook told his story, about the coat, and the pegs in the Lyons – one with a coat and one without. The parents looking for their daughter.
‘So you don’t know she’s alive?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ Cook replied. ‘Everyone thought she was on that bus, so they thought she was dead. If she wasn’t on the bus, but she hadn’t come home, would you think she was dead?’
Cook watched as Reynolds thought it through. He didn’t want to let himself hope, if it was going to be taken away again.
‘We should tell Gracie,’ he said.