The building had a derelict air. Only a chink of light escaping from a shuttered basement window beneath a shop indicated occupation. It seemed Niven had arrived ahead of his target, for as he approached the building he spotted Landor rollicking along the street, seemingly a man without a care in the world.
Niven stepped out in front of him as Landor was about to descend the steps to the basement and join his disreputable confrères.
“Evening, Mr. Coker,” Landor said, quite unfazed by Niven’s sudden appearance. Niven didn’t bother with the niceties. He grabbed Landor by his lapels, picked him up and hung him by his jacket on the railings. “My dog’s ready to tear your face off, Landor,” he said. On cue, Keeper gave a throaty growl.
“What do you want?” Landor said, flippant in the face of threat. He was used to violence, on both the giving and receiving end.
“Why were you asking about Gwendolen Kelling?”
Landor didn’t answer and Niven grasped him round the throat and shook him. “Answer me. Why are you following her? Who are you working for—Azzopardi? What does he want with Gwendolen Kelling?”
“Azzopardi?” Landor seemed genuinely amused. “You think I’m following that woman for Azzopardi?”
“For someone else?”
“You really don’t know?” Landor laughed again. He laughed far too much for Niven’s taste.
“No, I really don’t know,” Niven said, increasingly annoyed by so much mirth. He drew his fist back, readying himself to smash it into Landor’s grinning face. “Who are you working for?”
“Your mother, Mr. Coker,” Landor laughed. “I’m working for your mother.”
Niven left him dangling on the railings and retrieved his car from where he’d parked it two streets away. He could swear he could still hear Landor laughing as he drove off.
* * *
—
“Well, what do you make of that?” he said to Keeper in the passenger seat as he sped along St. John’s Wood Road. His mother was using this man Landor to keep an eye on Gwendolen Kelling. It followed that Gwendolen must be working for one of Nellie’s enemies. Azzopardi or Maddox. She could be in danger from either of them, but the greatest threat to her safety must surely come from his mother.
Niven’s arrival back in Hanover Terrace coincided with the Bentley disgorging Nellie. Did she never sleep? It was three in the morning—where had she been? There was no point in asking her, she would never say. No point in asking her about Gwendolen Kelling either. She prided herself on her deviousness.
He had only just fallen off the cliff of sleep when he was being shaken quietly awake by Nellie. “Get up quickly,” she whispered. “It’s an emergency.”
The Pigeon
Freda woke on a bench in Drury Lane Gardens, where she had spent an uncomfortable night, her faithful little suitcase serving as a hard pillow. The gardens had once been a church burial ground and there were still gravestones near the wall. Spending the night in the company of the dead did not make for a sound sleep. Freda had scoffed at Florence when she had gone on about King Tut and his curse, but there had been moments during the night when she was prepared to believe in the supernatural world.
Freda had soon been harried off her bench and out of the gardens by a policeman, as if she were a tramp. The policeman had called her some dreadful names. Impugning my virtue, she thought, which was something Duncan used to say, putting on a lisp and a funny hand gesture. Freda couldn’t have spelt “impugn” correctly to save her life. （“From the Latin,” Duncan said. “Pugnare, ‘to fight.’？” He’d been to a “good” school. “Several lifetimes ago,” he said.） “This is no place for tarts,” the policeman said, “so get along or I’ll have you up before the bench in Bow Street for vagrancy.” Freda wondered if he had a daughter of his own and if this was how he would like her to be treated, but she didn’t ask. “Meek, not cheek” when dealing with the Old Bill, Duncan used to caution.
She was an orphan of the storm, which was something that Vanda had once called her, even though she wasn’t an orphan and the weather at the time had been quite pleasant, for once.
Freda was homeless and penniless, not to mention Florence-less. It was not a position that she had ever expected to find herself in. She had expected applause at the very least. I am at a dead end, she exclaimed to herself, melodrama being all that was left to her. She was also so hungry she felt as if all her insides had shrivelled back to her bones.