‘What’s missing?’

  ‘Hard to tell.’

  I smiled. ‘I’m not so sure. Did you find his master list?’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘A list of names and numbers – several pages long. He used to keep it in the bottom-left drawer of his desk.’

  Chambers shuffled through the documents in front of him and pulled one out. ‘This what you mean?’ He brought it over and I glanced at it.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘If you look at each separate file, you’ll see a number on the back. That corresponds to the number on the list. If you cross-reference them, you’ll find out what’s missing.’

  ‘It’ll take forever,’ said Chambers.

  ‘Better get started, then,’ said Marchant. Chambers paused for a moment, then set to work. Whatever the equality of their ranks in the force, Marchant had evidently attained a superior degree at the Lodge. ‘How did you know about this?’ he asked, turning to me.

  ‘I worked with O’Connor, remember? He taught me all his tricks – some of them, anyway.’

  ‘So you could work out what was taken from your own files in the same way?’

  ‘Could. Did.’

  He nodded his head towards the door. ‘Come outside.’

  ‘One last thing,’ I said. I went over to O’Connor’s desk and peered at the telephone. I remembered the original number, but there was a chance he’d changed it. It was written there just like on the phone at his house; the same number that I’d once shared with him. It wasn’t the number he’d given me to call him on. That had never seemed likely. ‘O’Connor didn’t have a secretary, did he?’ I asked.

  Marchant shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ He looked around the room. ‘But I don’t see any feminine touches. Do you?’

  With that he headed back out. I followed. In the courtyard he lit a cigarette, then offered me one. We stood in silence for a moment.

  ‘I take it Tremaine explained to you about this German,’ Marchant said at last.

  ‘Some of it. Like I said, I’m a civilian, so he had to be careful. He said his department would investigate.’

  ‘You believe him?’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll investigate. I’m not so sure what they’ll do with anything they find.’

  Marchant nodded. ‘That was my supposition. All for the good of the country, I suppose.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  He answered me with a question of his own. ‘You worked out what was missing from your office, then?’

  ‘Just one file: case of a Peeping Tom on Grove Street.’

  ‘Solved?’

  ‘Resolved … but I can’t see a connection. Have you come up with anything?’

  ‘The doctor confirms that the bullet wound was the cause of death. No other signs of injury. Bullet was a .455 – probably from a Webley. There must still be hundreds of them knocking around from the war.’

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked, choosing not to mention that I’d inherited just such a revolver from my father. Thankfully I didn’t keep it at home.

  ‘We dusted the photographs that Tremaine gave me for prints. Found three sets of them.’

  I thought back through the previous evening: my own examination of the pictures on the train; Tremaine peeling off his glove to get them out of the envelope. ‘Me, Tremaine and …?’

  ‘And O’Connor himself.’

  It made sense, though there was one slight surprise in it. ‘Tremaine let you take his prints?’ I asked.

  ‘He had a cup of coffee at the station. We got them off that.’

  It seemed careless behaviour from a professional like Tremaine. ‘I presume you dusted my rooms.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, we found plenty there. It’ll take days to go through them, and I doubt we’ll find anything. O’Connor was wearing gloves. I imagine this German would have been smart enough to do the same.’

  ‘Any chance I could get a copy of the photos?’

  He snorted. ‘I never took you for that type. Sends you blind, you know.’

  I scowled. ‘To help find the girl,’ I explained.

  ‘Afraid not. Tremaine’s taken them back with him to London – to prevent exactly that, I suspect.’

  ‘O’Connor’s darkroom’s through there.’ I nodded inside. The door at the back of the office led through to where he used to develop his pictures. ‘I didn’t deliver any negatives. They may still be there.’

  ‘I had a look but there’s tons of stuff in there. Another long job, presuming whoever turned this place over was slapdash enough to leave anything like that behind. And even if we find something, I’ll have to send it straight to Tremaine.’

  ‘So why look?’

  ‘I’m a copper.’ He took a final drag from his cigarette and flicked it to the ground, grinding it to extinction with his heavy boot. ‘You’d better get lost. You’re still a suspect, officially. If we find what’s missing from the files, I’ll be in touch.’

  He went back inside. I looked at my watch. It was getting on for 7 o’clock. I headed home.

  *

  Mrs Croft had made meat pie and mash. I was late back for dinner, but she’d kept it warm. I ate it alone in my rooms. Jack had fixed the door, but the window was still covered with paper. The carpet was still stained. After I’d eaten, I listened to the wireless. The BBC got very serious on a Sunday, so I tuned in to Radio Luxembourg instead. I had a half bottle of Scotch tucked away behind a row of books in my living room, which, to my relief, neither the original intruders nor the police had disturbed. I poured myself a glass.

  For a good while I sat, listening to the music and contemplating all that had taken place in the past twenty-four hours. The previous day I’d been hoping that a simple courier job would lead to something more interesting. I should have been more careful what I wished for. But at least there was something to investigate – a case, if unpaid. Should I really be sticking my nose in? Tremaine didn’t think so, and part of me knew he was right. Churchill and Eden were fearful of Germany, and they seemed to have a better grasp of what was going on than Chamberlain and Halifax. O’Connor’s death going unavenged might be a fair enough price to prevent a war. Or help win a war, if it came to that.

  But another part of me disagreed. And it wasn’t just me. Marchant thought the same – if not he’d have kicked me out of O’Connor’s office without a second thought. He couldn’t be seen trying to bring this German to book, and so he was giving me the chance to do so – what little chance there was. Tremaine wasn’t going to reveal the name of the Jerry in question, and there must have been dozens of them at the embassy in London. Of course, you don’t need a name if you have a picture, but then Tremaine had dealt very nicely with that too. Maybe Marchant would find the negatives, but he wouldn’t dare let me see them.

  But then I didn’t actually need to see them.

  Bing Crosby had just started crooning The Moon Got in My Eyes as I crossed the room to get my sketchpad. I sharpened my pencils and then gazed blankly at the wall, picturing the scenes that had been laid out before me in the photographs. I started by drawing him in simple profile, exactly as in the photos – his short dark hair, his small chin. I did him a few times, each sketch based on what I could remember of a particular photograph, never going beyond what I knew of the right side of his face. I considered my work. He didn’t look very Germanic, but I resisted the urge to make alterations on that basis. It was a good representation founded on a good recollection, just like they’d taught me at the RCA. It should have been my career.

  I drew the girl, too, wondering whether she was local or had travelled down to Brighton for this special occasion. Could she have been the woman I’d spoken to on the telephone? I wasn’t surprised to discover that O’Conner had kept a mistress – he’d never been faithful to his wife while I’d been working with him – but surely even he wouldn’t sink so low as to use his own lover in pictures like those. But what did I know? If I could find either woman, I’d discover whether or not they were one and the same. It had been a mistake to think initially how she looked like Claudette Colbert; my first two attempts had more of the movie star in them than of the girl on the bed in the Metropole. I tried again, forcing myself to be strictly accurate. The artistic urge was to create; the technical to reproduce. I’d been trained in both, but also educated to consider when each aspect of my trade was more appropriate. I looked at my finished work and was happy with it. I’d been worried that I was going to make her too good-looking, but it wasn’t a mistake. She had been.

  I went back to the man and allowed my imagination full rein. I’d only ever seen him from the right-hand side, but I was experienced enough to take a guess at what he might look like full on. I came up with three different possibilities. I couldn’t know how close the likeness was – it certainly wouldn’t stand up in court – but it might help someone else to recognize him. At the very least it would be interesting to discover how well I’d done, if I ever did find him.

  I should have stopped there, but there was more that I remembered – much more. I began a new sheet of paper and started sketching again; not just their faces, but everything I’d seen. Every detail of body touching body, skin rubbing against skin, flesh penetrating flesh. I can’t deny that I enjoyed it, much as O’Connor must have enjoyed taking those pictures, perhaps more so. For him the participation was minimal; the simple pressure of a finger on a shutter release. With the drawings, everything came from me, from my hand. It was the closest one could come to touching without actually being there. And I so desired to touch.

  Before I looked up at the clock again, I’d recreated all sixteen of the photographs and the Scotch was almost gone. I knew places where I could get good money for my drawings, but I wasn’t into that. I cast my eyes over them, admiring my own work in more ways than one. I’d gone beyond my memories in composing these, adding detail no camera could pick up. I had created. But I couldn’t be sure I’d got it right. The nudes we’d painted in class never revealed themselves so intimately, and whenever I’d been with women, I’d not been looking at them with the eye of an artist. It didn’t matter. The pictures were for no one’s benefit but my own. If others saw them, they might not understand. The girl – as I had drawn her, as I had created her, and despite the acts in which I had depicted her – was beautiful. I was happy with what I had done.

  Fred Astaire sang Nice Work If You Can Get It from the wireless.

  *

  I must have dozed off. When I awoke, the wireless speaker was hissing nothingness. I looked at the clock. It was almost three in the morning. I stood up to go to the bedroom, pausing to take one last look at my work. It was only then that I remembered the final additions I’d made to one of the drawings.

  She was lying on her back, her eyes for once directed at her lover, not at the camera. He was kneeling over her, his hands on her knees, parting them, his eyes looking downwards at where he soon would be. Except that the eyes of neither of them were visible in what I’d drawn, thanks to those late alterations that I’d made through some bizarre inspiration.

  Each face was now obscured by the blank, round-eyed anonymity of a gas mask.

  CHAPTER 8

  The morning took me to Grove Street. It was a steep trek up the hill into Hanover. I couldn’t recall the names of anyone I’d spoken to, or the precise addresses, except that all the incidents had occurred on the western side of the street. Once I was there, it all came quickly back to me. I recognized a blue front door, its paint peeling to reveal green underneath. I knocked.

  A familiar face greeted me, but I couldn’t put a name to it. She was typical of the women who lived around here: in her thirties, but the accumulation of hard work and childbearing pushing her prematurely into her fifties. It was an unambitious man who spied through these windows – but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant for the victims.

  ‘It’s Mr Woolf, isn’t it?’ She rubbed her hand on her dirty apron and then across her forehead, leaving a streak of coal dust. ‘The fellow that helped us with the lecher.’

  ‘That’s right, Mrs …’

  ‘Stephens.’ I remembered as soon as she said it. ‘That’s all sorted now, though, innit?’

  ‘Well, we never caught him.’

  ‘You think he might come back?’

  There was no need to alarm her. ‘No, that’s very unlikely. But I do have a possible suspect.’ I showed her one of the drawings I’d done the previous night. Just the man’s head in profile. ‘Does he look familiar, at all?’

  She took it from me, then stepped out into the street to be in the sunlight where she could see it better. She looked for a few seconds, then shook her head. ‘Sorry, never saw him before. Mind you, none of us ever got a good look at him.’ I handed her another sketch of him, from the front this time, drawn in part from my imagination. She shook her head again.

  ‘What about this one?’ It was an off-chance, but I handed her a picture of the girl – again just the face.

  She studied it for longer this time, but with the same conclusion. ‘Stranger to me. Pretty, though. Pestering her now, is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. But many thanks.’

  I tried a few more houses, but with no better result. It had been a long shot, but it served a secondary purpose. As I conducted my interviews, memories of the case came back to me: names and faces plus a few details of exactly what they’d seen and heard. But none of it related to a German diplomat, or to O’Connor, or to anything connected with the current case.

  I went back down the hill towards the Level, and then climbed the almost as steep Trafalgar Street towards the station. It was just after twelve and so the pubs were open now. It wasn’t simply that I needed a drink, though. I went down to the Royal Standard, where I peered through the window and spotted her at the bar. Her red hair – still the precise shade that nature had once, long ago, dictated – curled under just short of her shoulders, as though moulded by an invisible hairnet. She was seated in her usual place. I don’t think anyone ever saw her enter or leave; she was simply there.

  I took the stool beside her. ‘Hey, Lottie,’ I said.

  She didn’t turn her head. Instead she looked at me in the mirror behind the bar, half-camouflaged by the words ‘Chivas Regal Blended Scotch Whisky’ in red and gold, along with a variety of etched ornaments. Even so, I could see that her face lit up. ‘Wotcher, Charlie!’ Her voice never ceased to surprise me in its soft-spoken meekness.

  ‘How’s business?’ I asked.

  ‘You know me, Charlie. I don’t need no business. I got a private income.’ She tried and failed to roll the ‘r’ of ‘private’.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ I said. ‘I’m not with the constabulary.’

  ‘You call yourself a detective, don’t you?’

  ‘Not much of one,’ I muttered.

  I felt her hand on my arm. ‘I heard about Al,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Still she looked at me only via the mirror. I tried to return her gaze, but found it uncomfortable. The patterns on the glass, combined with bottles in the foreground and her reflection behind produced a fractured, overlapping whole which reminded me all too much of the dislocated images my mind would produce before the onset of migraine. I was afraid that it could provide more than a reminder – that it might actually induce an attack. I’d seen mirrors like it before and a headache had never followed, but I’d always looked quickly away. I did so now.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s very kind. A Mackeson’s, please.’ She addressed the barman as much as she did me, then drained the glass in front of her. I ordered a Tamplin’s for myself. The barman brought them both, opening the bottle for her and putting it on the bar, not bothering to pour. She took the empty glass in her left hand and the bottle in her right, staring intently as she tilted both to a precise angle. The milk stout flowed from one to the other, a white head forming above the black liquid. I paid the barman, but kept my eyes on what she was doing. When she had finished, the bottle was completely empty and the foam just peeped over the rim of the glass. She took a sip, then wiped her upper lip.

  ‘Funeral’s tomorrow, I hear,’ she said.

  ‘Really? When?’ I wasn’t surprised that Mrs O’Connor hadn’t bothered to let me know, but she couldn’t keep it off the grapevine.

  ‘Eleven o’clock … at the Borough Crematorium.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Think they’ll catch him?’

  ‘I’m not sure they’re trying.’

  ‘What? Why the hell not?’ Even in anger, she could barely raise her voice.

  I shrugged; it was too complicated to explain.

  ‘It’s not right,’ she said. ‘You should look into it. Al was your friend.’

  I risked a glance at her in the mirror, my eyebrows raised.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You already are.’

  I reached into my pocket and took out one of the sketches of the girl in the photographs. I showed it to Lottie. ‘She one of yours?’ I asked.

  She glanced at it briefly. ‘Pretty. I wish she was but, no, I never seen her.’

  ‘Doesn’t work for one of your competitors?’

  ‘Like I say, I never seen her. And I would have unless she’s new in town.’ She tried to hand the picture back to me.

  ‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘Ask around.’

  ‘Will it help Al?’

  ‘As much as anything can.’

  She reached down for her handbag and slipped the picture inside. We sat in silence for a few minutes, she sipping her stout, I my bitter.

  ‘You should get yourself a nice girl,’ she said at length.

  I looked directly at her, surprised, but still she didn’t turn her head towards me. ‘One of yours, you mean?’

  ‘A nice girl,’ she insisted. ‘Someone you could take home to see your mother.’ She paused. ‘On the other hand, I’m sure I could find someone if you’re interested.’

  I smiled, pretending to take it as a joke, but I don’t know if she noticed. If she could find me just this girl then I would be interested, in more ways than one. I downed my pint quickly, wanting to be out of there, not because her suggestion appalled me; more out of the suspicion that it didn’t.