Chapter 70
Reynolds put the phone down and stepped out of the telephone box.
‘Girl done good,’ he said. ‘Regent’s Place.’
Cook looked at the hotel, across the road.
Dark in the blackout. He could see how it had lured Ruby in.
The glamour, the feeling you were in the thick of it.
The problem was, that sort of place attracted the wrong sort, like wasps to a fallen apple.
Cook thought of the kind of man who’d prey on a young girl.
He was looking forward to having words, once Ruby was safe.
*
The sirens had been going for twenty minutes.
Cook and Reynolds sat in the car, in the darkness.
Reynolds had pulled up against the curved railings on the right-hand side of the road.
Behind the railings, a half-moon-shaped garden.
Beyond the garden, the wider expanse of Regent’s Park.
To their left, a handsome crescent of Regency houses – John Nash’s grand design for urban living.
An ancient oak hung over the road, its roots making a mess of the pavement, forcing up the tarmac in waves.
They’d watched a flurry of people scurrying out of their houses as the siren started. A nightly exodus, well honed by now.
‘What do you reckon, the bombers come this far west?’ Reynolds muttered. The siren had been real enough, but they hadn’t heard any planes. Certainly no bombs.
‘Things continue much longer like this, there won’t be any East End left,’ Reynolds continued. ‘Then what?’
Cook had noticed a great many ‘TO LET’ signs in the surrounding streets.
The crescent was relatively free of them.
Even if the owners of these houses had left town, they wouldn’t be looking to those properties to earn an income.
Many of the houses here, Cook suspected, were only used for certain times of the year, when the landed gentry would come to town for ‘the season’.
‘Pretty smart idea,’ Reynolds said. ‘You’ve got to hand it to her.’
Cook thought about it. A crowded shelter, the frisson of excitement as the sirens wail and the bombs go off. The sort of place where a person might talk, give away valuable information, to the right sort of listener.
‘Until someone makes the connection and decides to get their own back,’ Cook said.
Reynolds nodded in the darkness. He leant behind the driver’s seat and produced two tin hats. ‘Put this on – makes you invisible.’
A standard-issue helmet, with a thin, leather chinstrap.
Cook had owned any number of them during his time in the army.
You got to the point you forgot you were wearing it, got the strap the way you liked it, then you’d lose it, have to get another one.
This one had two major differences – it was painted black, and it had three letters stencilled across the front.
ARP
‘You can go anywhere with that,’ Reynolds said. ‘Like having the keys to the city.’
As they walked away from the car, Cook noticed Reynolds had done the same to the car – ARP in bright white paint on the driver’s door. A clever way of becoming invisible.
Reynolds pulled a key ring from his coat pocket – it held a collection of picks. He had the front door unlocked in no more time than it would take a normal person to use a key.
To their left, the sitting room had been closed up – dustsheets covering every item of furniture, and the curtains drawn. Left in stasis, ready for its owners to return after the bombing had ended.
‘Ruby?’ Reynolds shouted. They stood, listening. The house was quiet.
‘Check upstairs,’ Cook said to Reynolds. Cook had his eye on a door under the staircase. He knew where it would lead – the cellar.
Cook trod carefully on the wooden stairs, listening to the sounds of the house. He could hear Reynolds hurrying around upstairs.
Cook had some experience of looking for a missing girl – an evacuee who’d been kidnapped and abused.
Elizabeth lived with him on the farm now, but Cook had found her in the dark cellar of a country house.
He realised a large part of him was expecting history to repeat itself.
The logical place to put someone, if you wanted to keep them alive, and keep them undiscovered.
‘Up here!’ Reynolds called, his voice muffled by the distance, echoing down several flights of stairs.
*
Reynolds was in a bedroom on the third floor. A grand room, large windows that Cook guessed looked out over the park. An indoor sink, for shaving and brushing teeth. Electric light.
Reynolds was staring at the top of a chest of drawers. He turned to Cook.
‘It’s hers,’ he said, picking up a grey box as if it were a precious artefact.
It was a gas mask box – an utterly recognisable shape and size, albeit customised to appeal to a young woman who wanted something a bit more individual than a brown cardboard box.
‘Got it at the market,’ Reynolds said. ‘Cost her a couple of shillings. She said if she was going to have to carry it everywhere it could bloody well look nice.’
Cook opened the box. Along with the gas mask there were other bits and pieces – a lipstick. Some tissues. A few bus tickets.
‘No way she would have left that,’ Reynolds said.