under the name of Pratt today. He has to stay somewhere, and that means either a hotel or a boarding house. They’re being checked now: the word’s gone out to all stations in the metropolitan area. The process will continue tomorrow if necessary, and you’ll have to be on call.’
‘That’s suits me, sir.’ Billy’s smile was wry. ‘Elsie and the kids are still up in Bedford. I wasn’t expecting to see them anyway till this was over.’
‘How about you, Sergeant?’ Sinclair turned to Grace, who had been silent all this time.
‘It’s no hardship to me, sir.’ Joe Grace’s pockmarked face broke into a wolfish grin. ‘I want to be there when we catch this bloke. I want to see his face when we put the cuffs on him.’
‘The cuffs, yes …’ The chief inspector nodded. Then his gaze hardened. ‘But just as a precaution, I want you both armed from now on. Collect your weapons from the armoury. I’ll authorize it. We may get word of Ash’s whereabouts at any time and I want you ready to move at once.’
He fell silent and the detectives waited. They saw he had something more to say.
‘When you come to approach him, you’re to do so with your revolvers drawn. Don’t take any chances. If you’re in any doubt as to how dangerous he is, cast your minds back to Wapping and what happened to Benny Costa.’
He paused to give his words time to sink in.
‘And if he makes any move to draw a gun, you’re authorized to shoot him. I take full responsibility. Is that clear?’
Billy nodded. His lips had tightened.
‘Sergeant?’ Sinclair looked at Grace.
‘Oh, don’t worry about me, sir.’ Grace’s grin widened. ‘It won’t bother me none. Not with a cold-blooded bastard like that. Mind you, shooting’s too good for him. I want to see him swing. Or better still, hand him over to the Frenchies. They still use the guillotine, don’t they? Now that would go down with me a treat.’
27
‘I’m sorry, Mr Madden, I really am, but this is something I can’t discuss with you, not until Evie gets back. You must ask her. She spoke to me about that incident on the train, but in strictest confidence. You’ll have to wait until she’s here. It won’t be long now.’
Mary Spencer hung her head. Slightly built, and with fine features set off by a pair of expressive brown eyes, she was clearly upset at having to refuse him, but equally determined not to budge from her resolve. Glancing at the kitchen clock, she tugged distractedly at the buttons on the thick cardigan she was wearing. Her eyes met Madden’s for a moment, then slid away. She reached for the teapot on the table between them.
‘Would you like another cup?’
‘Thank you, no.’
Struggling to contain his frustration, Madden glanced at the clock himself. It was just after half-past twelve. He had arrived at the Grange half an hour earlier having walked from the crossroads where he’d been dropped through a flurry of snow, which had lasted only a few minutes and then cleared. The road had led through a small wood before reaching the fork he’d been told about, where the ruins of an old mill stood by a pond and where he had kept to the right as instructed. Shortly afterwards he had seen the chimneys of a house thrusting up above a ridge and then the place itself, a sprawling brick-built dwelling, larger than the average farmhouse and standing a little way off from the road he was on. A narrow, rutted lane had led to a stable yard at the rear of the house, bordered by stalls behind which Madden glimpsed some pigsties and a chicken run. The yard itself was covered with snow out of which a handsome snowman had been erected quite close to the kitchen door. Some five feet in height and broad in proportion, it had conkers for eyes and a carrot for its nose and was sporting a black bowler tilted rakishly to one side.
The yard had been deserted as he’d entered it through a pair of gateposts stripped of the wrought-iron gates they must once have had, but he had taken only a few steps across the snow-covered cobbles when the back door opened and a woman had put her head out.
‘Yes … can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for Mrs Spencer,’ Madden had replied.
‘I’m Mary Spencer.’ Her tone had been friendly.
‘How do you do. My name’s Madden. John Madden. I live not far away. At Highfield, in Surrey. I took the train over this morning.’ He’d walked across the yard to her. Actually, the person I want to speak to is Eva Belka. I understand she works for you. Would it be possible for me to see her?’
‘Eva … Evie?’ Her eyes had widened in surprise when she heard the name. ‘Yes, of course. But I’m afraid she’s not here at the moment.’
Before Madden had had a chance to respond, he’d been interrupted by a sound, the creak of an unoiled wheel, and glancing behind him he had seen the crouched figure of a man emerge from one of the stalls at the rear of the yard pushing a wheelbarrow heavy with cut logs. Elderly by the look of him, he was bent almost double by the load he was propelling through the snow and Madden had moved instinctively to help him.
‘Here, let me give you a hand with that,’ he’d said.
‘Hello-!’ Taken by surprise — the old fellow had been plodding forward with his head down — he came to a halt, letting go of the wheelbarrow handles as he did so. Its metal supports rang dully on the snow-cushioned cobbles. Between the scarf he had wrapped around his neck and a cap pulled down low, Madden glimpsed a pair of cheeks covered in white stubble and a rheumy eye. ‘Didn’t see you there, sir.’
‘Oh, Hodge, you really mustn’t. That’s much too heavy for you.’ Mrs Spencer came to life. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury.’
She had hurried down the steps from the door, but was too late to prevent Madden from taking hold of the handles himself and wheeling the barrow over to a woodbin that stood against the wall of the house near the back door.
‘That is kind of you, but you shouldn’t, Mr…? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Madden.’
‘Mr Madden …’
She waited until they had finished tossing the logs into the woodbin, then spoke again:
‘Come inside, won’t you? And you, too, Hodge. Mrs H and I were about to have a cup of tea.’ To Madden she added, ‘And you want to speak to Evie, you say?’ She smiled. ‘It’s what my son has always called her and now we all do.’
‘If I may.’ Madden had followed her up the steps. ‘As you’ve probably gathered, I don’t know her, but I believe she was a friend of a young Polish woman who worked for me as a land girl.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Spencer had looked surprised. ‘Well, she’ll be back soon so you won’t have long to wait. She and my son have walked over to some neighbours of ours.’
Inside the warm kitchen ‘Mrs H’ was revealed to be a woman several sizes larger than her husband and occupied at that moment in stoking the embers of an iron range. Down on her knees, she lifted a round, red face lit by a smile when Mrs Spencer introduced them, but continued with her work, prodding the fire vigorously with a poker until she was satisfied, and then carefully inserting logs into it, cut to measure, from a pile lying on the stone-flagged floor beside her.
‘A Polish girl, you say?’ Having hung Madden’s coat and hat on a hook in the wall behind a Christmas tree which stood at one end of the spacious kitchen, Mrs Spencer began to busy herself with the tea things, laying out cups and saucers and fetching a tin of biscuits from a cupboard. ‘Eva never told me she had a friend in the neighbourhood.’
‘They only met recently,’ Madden explained. ‘That’s to say they didn’t know they were living so close to one another, or even that they were both in England. But they attended the same college in Warsaw years ago.’
‘Oh,
‘Rosa. Rosa Nowak.’
‘I remember now. They met on the train going up to London and Eva said this girl … Rosa … had promised to
