Luke stood up and grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the chair.
‘I’m going out,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sick of hanging around here. I need some air.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, alarmed at this sudden change of mood.
He marched out of the room, slamming the door behind him. She went to the window and saw him walking down the path, without looking back.
‘You bastard.’
She sat down on the saggy sofa and buried her face in her hands. Here, amongst her father’s old books and clutter, in the room that still smelled of his cigarettes and bore his imprint more than any other in the house, her loss came home to her and was almost too much to bear.
13
Albert Hall Mansions was a rambling red-brick Victorian building. As its name suggested, it was next door to the Albert Hall. Approaching it from the bus stop on Hyde Park Corner, Laura was surprised to see how grand it was. From her brief conversation at the funeral with Jim Leech, and judging by his shabby appearance, she had expected him to live somewhere down-at-heel.
Jim’s apartment was on the ground floor. He showed Laura through a panelled hall and into a cavernous drawing room, crowded with heavy antique furniture and gloomy paintings. Buses rumbled past, rattling the dusty windows. The old man asked her to sit down. She sunk into a large sofa with sagging springs. Jim brought her a stewed cup of tea and handed it to her with shaking hands, spilling some of it onto the saucer.
Looking even more frail without his hat and coat, Jim was painfully thin, his face pale and drawn. He wore a baggy white shirt, and his trousers were held up by old-fashioned braces. On his feet was a pair of brown leather carpet slippers. It was the first time Laura had seen him without his hat. What was left of his hair was pure white.
‘This is a very nice flat,’ she said, looking around at the huge room with its high ceiling.
‘Yes. I’ve lived here for about thirty years. It’s served me well.’
‘And what did you do for a living?’ She could not resist the question.
Jim smiled. ‘I expect you’re wondering how someone like me managed to fork out for this place, aren’t you?’ he asked. Laura felt herself colouring.
‘Well, I don’t mind telling you. I built up me own small hotel chain. Started it up from nothing. After the war I got a job as a porter at the Savoy. I was clever all right, and I worked out how the hotel business works and how to make money out of it. I scrimped and saved enough to buy a bomb-damaged building in Kensington. Did it up gradually on a shoe string. Managed to do a lot of the work myself in me spare time. Then, when it opened, and started to make a profit, I looked around for another one. I’ve got five of them now, dotted about central London. They are called Leech’s Hotel. They’re not the Savoy, but they’re cheap and cheerful, popular with commercial travellers and the like. They always turn in a tidy profit.’
‘Amazing. That you built it all up from scratch like that,’ said Laura.
‘Well, I made me own luck.’ There was a silence, and Laura sensed that he had something to tell her. From the way he was staring at the carpet and breathing hard, it seemed as if he was gathering up courage to do so.
‘I did that in the camps too, you know,’ he said at last, lifting his eyes and looking straight at her. ‘In the war. I was a sort of, well, an entrepreneur. I suppose you can call it that. I regret all that now though. Bitterly regret it.’
‘Why?’ she asked gently. In his face, haggard and pained, she glimpsed the same look she had seen on her father’s face when he had spoken about Jim Leech and the war.
‘Because I cheated starving men. I bought things from them dirt cheap and sold them on for a profit. I took advantage of their weakness and the fact they were hungry. I sometimes gave them money for giving up their rations the next day, and sold those rations to another man for a profit. I bought things from the villagers outside the camp whenever I could, and then sold them at a profit. I lied and I cheated … And there was worse, much worse.’
Laura watched his face, waiting for him to go on, but he seemed to falter.
‘I wasn’t the only one, mind you. There was a little group of us businessmen operating the black market. But I was the lynchpin, the head of operations, always.’
‘But why? What made you do it?’
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’d always been poor. I was a teenager during the Depression, was living in the East End. Me dad was a labourer. He was often out of work. I knew what it meant to be hungry. So when I spotted ways of making things better for myself, even if they wasn’t legit, I did them. It was the survival instinct kicking in, I suppose.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself. The circumstances were extraordinary. None of us knows how we’ll react until something dreadful happens.’
‘But I do blame myself. I blame myself every day. I torture myself with the memories. I try to make amends.’ There were tears in his eyes now. ‘When I think of all those poor lads who never came back …’ Jim trailed off, shaking his head.
Laura bit her lip. ‘What was it you wanted to tell me, Mr. Leech? Why did you want me to come and see you?’ she asked when he looked as though he had recovered his composure a little.
Jim looked at her vaguely.
‘Ellis would never talk to me,’ he said at last.
‘He seemed to be angry with you. He wouldn’t say why
