suitable instrument for some on-the-hoof surgery. The best I could find was a long, thin-bladed carving knife; it was a little big for the job, but the only one with a point strong and sharp enough to dig into flesh.
Taking it over to the range, I lifted the saucepan and put the knife's blade into the small but fierce flames, slowly turning it over so that both sides and edges were sterilized without becoming blackened. I kept it in the heat for about two minutes, then replaced the saucepan with the knife's blade inside so that the water quickly came to the boil again.
I filled another saucepan and exchanged it for the one on the gas cooker and then, leaving the blade in the bubbling water, I carried the first saucepan upstairs.
Stern held out for some time before he started screaming. I'd had to probe deeper than I'd thought to get the knife's tip beneath the lump of lead, Cissie holding the lamp as close as she could while endeavouring to keep the German down with her other hand. Once, he rolled out of her grasp onto his back and I had to withdraw the blade quickly. When we got him on his side again, I went to work more ruthlessly, ignoring his screams and sliding the blade down through spurting blood and along hard metal while Cissie used her whole weight to pin him there. Twisting the knife and levering sharply and forcefully, I felt the bullet move. Stern's scream filled the room and probably echoed up the street as the bloodied lump fell out onto the stained bedsheet I went limp thinking I'd killed him until I saw his chest still rising and falling.
I saw there was blood on his lips.
Cissie finished up, cleaning and dressing both wounds while I went back downstairs to fetch more hot water. I brought it up and helped her change the bedsheets for new, if not fresh, ones, rolling the unconscious German to one side and covering the blood-sodden mattress with double layers of towels. I left her there to watch over him, wearily treading downstairs again to the jumbled front room, my bloody hands shaking so much it was impossible to light the cigarette I took from one of the cartons I kept on the mantelshelf; in the end I had to lean close to the camp cooker and light it from the blue flame. I sank into the armchair, rusted springs groaning under my weight, and rested my head back. I closed my eyes and filled my throat and lungs with smoke.
There was whisky in the kitchen cabinet, but I was too dog-tired to get it.
It was still dark when moans from over my head awoke me. I sat there and listened to Stern's agony, feeling pity, anger and helplessness. The pity was for Stern, something I never thought I'd feel for a German; the anger was against those bastards who'd done this to him; and the helplessness was because there was nothing more Cissie and I could do.
There were footsteps on the stairs - the whole house warned of any movement inside its walls with creaks and grumbles and even sighs - and then dread took a slow dive into the pit of my stomach when the shadowy form of Cissie appeared in the open doorway. I already knew what she was gonna ask me to do.
'Hoke, he needs medication now, something to kill the pain. Antiseptic, too, and fresh dressings and bandages to keep the wound clean. He won't last the night otherwise.'
Oh shit, I thought. Goddamn bloody shit. I hauled myself out of the armchair.
The enormous, Gothic-grim hospital was a mile or so away, along Whitechapel, its edifice forbiddingly bleak in the moonlight I'd taken time only to wash away some of the blood and to pull on a grey sweatshirt, its sleeves cut away at the elbows, to protect me from the slight chill that had come with the early hours. Taking the pistol - I noted for the first time it was a Browning .22 - from the table, I tucked it back into the waistband of my pants and left the house. I ducked into the pitch-black alleyway, a hand running along the rough brick wall for guidance, and returned to the Austin open-top that had brought us here. The drive hadn't taken long, but I stayed in the car on the ramp outside the hospital's main entrance for a while, steeling myself to go inside. Only the thought that Wilhelm Stern had saved my life twice and the more I delayed the worse it was for him made me open the car door and mount the steps to the open entrance (those doors were open because old bones had jammed them that way).
Holding the lantern I'd brought with me shoulder-high, I went inside.
I still hate thinking about those wards and corridors packed with human debris, some of the corpses piled on top of each other as if their last moments had been spent struggling, fighting for attention maybe; now they were locked together in eternal strife, or at least until their bones collapsed. There were smaller forms among them, the deteriorated bodies of children, but I refused to look at their little withered faces, treading through them carefully, my eyes averted, looking directly ahead. They were everywhere, those mouldering things that were once living, breathing people, in every space, every corner, as I'd known they would be, and I shuddered each time my foot brushed against something brittle and crumbly. The sour smell was everywhere too and I clamped my hand over my mouth and nose to mask the worst of it.
It took almost an hour to find the room I was looking for and still I hadn't toughened myself against the carnage around me: I was scared to my boots, and nausea was only a heave away. Even as I broke into locked glass cabinets and examined vials and jars, looked through cupboards for gauze and surgical dressings, then into drawers for pills and syringes, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see something I really didn't want to see. I gathered up anything that might be useful, including sedatives, forcing myself to be calm, to take my time and collect essentials and maybe not-so essentials, loading scissors and safety pins, antiseptic creams and boxes of Elastoplast, anything that came to hand, into a laundry bag I'd taken from a storage closet. Only when I was sure I was done did I run from that place.
It was growing light behind the distant rooftops as I drove along the broad Whitechapel High Street and weariness was making my eyelids heavy and my hands like lumps of lead on the steering wheel. It didn't take long to find my way back to Old Castle Street, and I was soon hurrying through the alleyway, my legs hardly able to support me, then pushing open the door to No 26.
Cissie was sitting on the stairs at the end of the short corridor, dawn light pressing itself through the begrimed window overhead to flush her hair and shoulders with its grey mantle. From her muffled sobs I knew I was too late. Stern was already dead.
20
WE LAY SIDE BY SIDE in the bedroom at the top of the house, both of us still fully clothed, Cissie watching me, one hand resting in the gap between us. I was on my back, looking out the window at the brightening sky, cigarette between my lips.
I'd led her to this room - next door was a much smaller, single-sized bedroom - and waited for her weeping to end, aware that those tears were not just over the death of Wilhelm Stern, whose body was covered by a single clean sheet on the bed in the room below us, but also over her friend's betrayal and everything that had followed in its aftermath: the botched attempt at blood transfusion, the slaying of poor old Albert Potter, the bombing of the Savoy, our flight downriver from the Blackshirts, leaving those other wretches, who'd been lured from their hideaways by the lights, to the mercies of a dying madman.
Her bewilderment at Muriel's treachery only increased her distress, because they'd become true friends -
or so Cissie had thought - during a period of massive upheaval when the world itself had been stripped of civilized guidelines and robbed of most of its inhabitants. Despite their different social backgrounds, they had formed an alliance, each one supporting the other in moments of despair, their companionship helping them keep their sanity. Until Muriel had discovered her own kind again in the form of Sir Max Hubble.
The guise she'd adopted in order to survive had fallen away like a cloak worn for warmth and not for taste, and that disloyalty - the choice Muriel had made - was something Cissie could not understand. The truth of it was - and I tried to make Cissie understand this - that the bitch
