Chapter Five
Five
Back out in the street, he drifted aimlessly for a while, nobody at the helm. Tightening grip of the hangover, mild adrenaline drop from how much money he’d just walked away from and the barely averted fistfight with Hardy—the cocktail mix of it all left him listless and cold despite the sun.
Fucking prick.
He wasn’t looking forward to telling Niamh what he’d just done. But the look on Hardy’s face had been worth it.
It dawned on him where his feet were taking him just before he arrived.
As he turned the corner onto Morton Street, the smell of frying bacon hit him in the face and did not, contrary to expectation, turn his stomach.
Apparently, he’d regained his appetite and his feet already knew it.
He duly followed his nose across the street and into the steamy interior of Grimaldi’s.
It was dim and peaceful inside, dark wood floor and fixtures, limited strands of sunlight sluicing in from the high, blinded windows.
Background rattle of plates and cutlery, the murmur of conversation between customers, the crackle/flap of a newspaper being tugged open or turned page to broadsheet page.
Grimaldi senior was behind the counter, lean and grizzled and bristly of chin, wiping a glass with a rag.
He spotted Duncan as he came in, bustled out to greet him in an accent from sunnier climes that twenty years in Erlsley had still not quite managed to kill.
“Eh, Silver. You wanna coffee.” It was an observation, not a question.
“Why I’m here. Give me the breakfast works, too, while you’re at it.”
“Is coming up. You been inna Forest?”
“Not recently. Why?”
“Eh.” Grimaldi gestured at his own face, like putting a mask on and off. “You look like it. You look tired like that.”
“Thanks. How’s Eduardo doing these days?”
“Good.” The brief stir of old terrors in the man’s eyes, thrust firmly down. “He don’t remember nothing now, I think. Happy boy, getting good at his sums in school.”
“Glad to hear that.”
Grimaldi headed back behind the counter, ducked through into the kitchen to shout instructions at Luisa.
Privately, Duncan thought he was being overly optimistic about Eduardo.
Recall of time with the Huldu wouldn’t disappear the way other early childhood memories would.
Instead, it seemed to retreat behind the same wall that kept your dreams apart from your worldly experience.
Then it sat there intact, ready to erupt whenever something less worldly—strange noises at night, fog under trees at dawn, scenes from some cheap pulp tale—stirred it back to life.
The food came—eggs, bacon, black pudding, sausage, beans, and a hunk of rye bread.
Pungent black coffee in a mug, a small jug of cream.
With the promised end of wartime rationing repeatedly pushed back, vast tracts of grazing land lost to the Forest, and good meat in short supply, it was a feast fit for royalty.
“Onna house,” warned Grimaldi as he unloaded it all from the tray, in case Duncan made the mistake, once again, of trying to act like a paying customer.
“You know, if you let me pay for things, I’d eat here a lot more often,” Duncan told him, not for the first time.
Grimaldi snorted. “You eat here a lot more often, maybe Luisa gonna start makin’ you pay. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
So look, Niamh—I may have flushed twenty-five shillings a day down the crapper, but I can always take you out to dinner for nothing at this Italian greasy spoon I know.
He dug in, appetite kindling like dry moss in sunlight bent through a lens. The bacon first, smoky on his tongue. A forkful of beans. Bread torn off—he broke a yolk with it and dipped in, chewed it down. He dosed his coffee with the cream, stirred it in. Drank half the mug down in one.
Better. His brain grumbled to life.
Force of habit, he was carrying his notebook. He fished it out, flipped through sketches and maps from the Forest, found a blank page. He penciled a list:
– Crumley ( leaned in.
“I’ll save you some trouble, shall I?” he growled.
“I’m headed up to Crumley that’s the Barclays on West Cavendish Street.
Then I’m going home. How about you put that in your report to Hardy and file it.
And file this, too—I don’t like being followed.
I’ve been tracked by elf hounds, foh-mhorai, and night shamblers, and it didn’t end well for any of them.
I catch you behind me again, I’ll put you in the fucking hospital. You got that?”
The man flinched, fingers touching his bloodied mouth. His lower lip trembled. It made him look suddenly very young. Duncan became aware of stares from passersby, and shocked faces. He realized he’d been shouting.
He drew a hard, steadying breath.
“Now,” he said evenly. “Pick up your cap, and your map, and fuck off.”
He stood there and watched as the man bent to do as he was told. A well-dressed couple paused to gawp. The woman’s face was flushed, eyes angry on Duncan.
“Shame on you,” she snapped before her partner could usher her hastily away.
“A soldier, I’d wager,” Duncan heard him saying to her as they went. “Combat stress reaction, you know. There’s a lot more of it than the doctors realize.”