Laurence was glad when they turned into a street at a right angle, away from the stares, but Charles stopped in surprise. The road ended in a bleak wasteland of rubble, laths and rubbish. Charles looked at his map.
'Wel, I'l be...'
'What's happened?'
'He should be here. At least, Florence Place should be here but it's not.'
A few yards away an old woman leaned against the last standing building: a boarded-up tavern. She was wrapped in a shawl and had a clay pipe in her hand.
She could have been a figure from fifty years before.
'Knocked 'em down ten years back. Pretty, in't it?' she said.
'Damn,' said Charles under his breath. 'We'l have to try the drinking den after al.'
Laurence felt something didn't quite fit. 'But if she's right, then this couldn't have been Tucker's address when he signed up, either.'
'No. Wel, nobody checked, I suppose. But then nobody would have been able to notify the next of kin, either.'
'Which wasn't necessary in Tucker's case.'
'No, or he didn't care.'
'Or he didn't have any next of kin.'
However, Laurence remembered Byers saying bitterly that there was a Mrs Tucker somewhere.
'Or he didn't like people knowing where he lived. Even then!' said Charles.
A handful of children started to gather round. One smal and grubby girl puled hard on Laurence's sleeve, silently but holding out her other hand. He slipped her a penny, hoping the others wouldn't see.
Charles walked less confidently back up the road, then stopped. The children folowed noiselessly.
'We can ask in there.' He pointed to the isolated public house. It was propped up by two wooden buttresses where neighbouring houses must have been torn down.
'It's closed,' said Laurence.
'I don't think so,' Charles replied.
There was no sign or brewery notice. Laurence crossed the road, walked up to the building and tried the door; it opened easily. Charles folowed him in. Three men were drinking beer around an upended crate, while two others and a drably dressed woman sat at a window seat. The landlord stood behind a rudimentary bar. A dog snarled at them from beside a stove, but made no effort to get up.
Laurence didn't feel threatened; the drinkers looked guarded rather than intimidating. Al talk had ceased as they came in. From what he could see of the landlord, he seemed to be dressed in part of a uniform: khaki trousers, topped with a colarless shirt and a waistcoat.
Laurence ordered two pints of beer. It came from a single unmarked keg. He handed over a shiling for the two. He doubted anyone else in there was paying the going rate. The landlord's unease might have been because the pub was open before drinking hours.
As if to read his mind, the man said defiantly, 'We keep to pre-war drinking in here, now it's not an official house.' Surprisingly, he had a London accent.
'I'm sorry to bother you,' Charles said firmly, 'but we're looking for an acquaintance.'
There was a snigger from the woman in the window.
'Tucker, Tucker's the name. Knew him in the war.' Laurence got out the photograph and put it on the bar. 'Used to live in Florence Place.'
The silence continued. Nobody looked at the photograph. Laurence looked round. No one met his eye.
Finaly the landlord spoke.
'And you think your old army mate drinks in here?'
'So we've been told. Him or his friends,' Laurence said.
'Lots of Tuckers.'
'He was a sergeant.'
'
'Wel, he said he used to live over there.' Laurence gestured to the derelict plot of land.
The woman in the window snorted again.
Laurence looked at her. She was smal, probably not more than twenty. Her face, as she gazed at him frankly, was pinched and either bruised or dirty.
'You knew him?' he asked her.
'Nah. Jest he came from a stinking rotten place. Gone now. It's al going now. Even this home from home.' She grimaced at her own surroundings.
The landlord looked irritated. 'We're providing a service. Just for the last weeks,' he said. 'No point wasting the
