“Can’t say I’ve ever tried it.”
“Always a first time for everything,” he said, which was something Duncan used to say, of course.
* * *
—
Ramsay explained his plan. It didn’t seem exactly legal to Freda to forge a letter from his mother to her bank so that he could swindle her, but he said that she’d been perfectly happy to lie about her age and experience to get this job （it was completely different!） and anyway he had no intention of swindling Nellie, he wasn’t taking her money out of the bank, he just needed to see some paperwork she kept there.
It still seemed like a swizz to Freda’s ears, and she said, “What’s to stop me from going straight to Mrs. Coker and letting the cat out of the bag?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
“No, I’m not.” The idea made her uncomfortable. She only had one friend, and until she found her she wasn’t interested in another. Ramsay was not her friend just because they spent quite a bit of time together. They were the same age really, even though he was several years older than her.
“Look, Freda,” he said awkwardly, “it may sound melodramatic, but it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Is that ‘metaphorically speaking’？”
“No, for real. This Azzopardi fellow says he’s going to kill me if I don’t do what he’s asking.”
“Pay me, then,” she said. She had become very bold since working at the Sphinx. She was beginning to understand her worth.
“Five pounds?” Ramsay offered.
“Fifteen.”
“Ten.”
“All right, then,” Freda said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
* * *
—
Freda went to the Sphinx’s tiny kitchen and found that they were out of tea, so she shouted to Ramsay to get another packet from the storeroom. He didn’t seem to hear her, so she went on the errand herself and found Ramsay standing as if frozen at the door of the storeroom. The red velvet curtain was pulled to one side and he was staring at something as if he’d been hypnotized.
“Something wrong?” she asked. He turned to look at her but didn’t speak. His face was bleached of colour.
She had to shove him to one side to see what had transfixed him.
A girl lay on the floor, motionless amongst the mops and crates.
“Is she dead?” Ramsay whispered.
“I think she might be.” Freda knelt beside the girl and took her hand. She was small, the same size and build as Freda. Freda held the girl’s hand and tenderly stroked her forehead. The girl didn’t stir, not a breath. “She’s gone,” Freda said, her voice a whisper, although she supposed it didn’t matter, you could shout at the top of your lungs and the dead wouldn’t hear.
“I’ll phone my mother,” Ramsay said. Nellie was always the first and last resort in an emergency for any Coker.
Freda wondered if she should cover the girl’s face, that’s what people did, wasn’t it? When their elderly next-door neighbour in the Groves died everyone had trooped round to view him in his bed as if he were entertainment. Someone had placed copper pennies on his eyes. Freda didn’t have any pennies, but she took off her cardigan and put it over the girl’s face.
Freda nearly jumped out of her skin when the girl pushed the cardigan off and started coughing and spluttering. Ramsay, on the phone behind the bar, gave an unmanly wail of horror.
Holding her throat with one hand, the girl struggled to sit up. “？’As ’e gone?” she croaked.
“Has who gone?” Freda glanced around in alarm.
“The bastard who tried to strangle me,” the girl said hoarsely. “Gertie Bridges,” she said, offering her small, recently lifeless hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I could murder a cup of tea.”
* * *
—
Nellie arrived and the tale was reeled out over the tea, laced with brandy by Nellie. In the early hours of the morning, Gertie said, she had been nearby, “working, if you get my drift,” and a man had dragged her into the Sphinx. “He had a key.”
There was a key at the back door, in a crack above the lintel. A lot of people knew where it was, Ramsay admitted. Nellie glared at him.
The man had tied her up, Gertie continued, and then gone away. “And then he come back, not long ago, and throttled me.” She lifted her neck so they could see. “Bruised, I expect?”
“Horribly.” Freda shuddered.