Page 40 of No Man's Land

Her face tensed. They didn’t get a lot of trouble in this part of London, but occasionally, and especially after the recent Zeppelin raids, a few yobs would take Jewish names for German ones and come looking for trouble. Before Josef had gone to the front, back at the start of the war, someone had put a brick through the shop window.

“Don’t worry,” he told Mrs Cohen, trying to sound less terrified than he felt. “Nobody’s getting past me. Go back into the parlour. I’ll keep an eye out at the front, make sure they’ve gone.”

Returning to the shop, he extinguished the lights and peered out through the dark glass of the window. Nothing looked back at him, but a crawling unease shifted beneath his skin. A watching, waiting sensation. Briefly, he considered making a run for it with the photo, leading the creature away from the shop and the Cohens. But where would he go? TheClarion’soffices would be shut by now, and he could think of nowhere else.

Besides, the idea of going out alone into that dismal fog, knowing what lurked within it… He couldn’t do it. The prospect turned his guts and knees watery.

No, better to wait for morning. Then he’d take all the photographs to theClarion. They’d be safer there than here. Safer for the Cohens to have them gone.

Meanwhile, Josef tightened his grip on the poker and prepared for a long and anxious night.

Chapter Thirteen

Josef took the tube the next morning, finding comfort in the crush of people. Better that than face more time than absolutely necessary in the foggy morning which scarcely seemed brighter than the previous night.

He ran from the station along Carmelite Street. When he reached the brightly lit offices of theClarion,it was with a huge sense of relief, and he raced up the stairs, two at a time, and into the office.

There he found a scene of devastation.

May stood amid it, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and fists planted on her hips, flyaway hair looking like she’d been tugging at it with both hands. All around her lay papers. The whole office appeared to have been ransacked, filing cabinets emptied, drawers turned out, her desk raided.

She looked up when he slid to a stop in the doorway, and their eyes met.

“I can only think it was the police,” she said, gesturing around. “Looking for censored material. We’ve sailed close to the wind a couple of times, but I never thought…”

Not the police. Josef knew exactly who’d done this; it was too much of a coincidence to be anyone other than Alex. Hadn’t he, only yesterday, demanded that Josef hand over the photograph of Sykes? Clearly, he hadn’t taken no for an answer. Then there were the photographs Josef had taken at the morgue. Probably, Alex had imagined Josef would develop them at the newspaper offices and had come here searching for them.

Only he hadn’t found them here, which meant…

Josef’s heart gave a hard thump. Alex knew where he lived, and the negatives showing Alex with Sykes’s body were hanging up in his room.

Stupid!

He’d been so afraid of those eerie blue eyes in the fog that he’d forgotten that the real threat came not from a fairytale monster but from Lord Alexander Beaumont and the government for which he worked. Had Alex been out there in the fog last night, waving blue lights about to frighten him? At this point, Josef could believe anything.

Including the fact that right at this moment Alex was probably searching his bloody room. The Cohens couldn’t hold back a powerful man like him even if he’d come alone. If he’d brought a companion, as he had the night in the sewer, the Cohens would be utterly at their mercy.

“Shit,” Josef said.

“I think it might be a warning,” May said, righting her chair with a sigh. “So far, I can’t see that anything’s been taken. There’s nothing here that breaches DORA, but–”

“They were after my photographs. The ones from the front.”

“How would they even know about them?” May frowned. “Here, you haven’t been flapping your mouth about them down the pub, have you, Joe?”

“No, of course not. Anyway, it’s not the police.”

“Who then?”

“Military Intelligence.”

Her face set. “Joe…”

“May, listen to me. Yesterday, I found Sykes in the mortuary at St. Thomas’s. He’s the same boy I saw click it at the front. The one I photographed. He’d been fished out of the sewer right here in London, but his wounds looked fresh, and then Lord Beaumont showed up, and he said—”

He cut himself off when he saw May’s pained expression. She didn’t believe him. Of course she didn’t, because he sounded like a madman. Until he understood what was happening himself, how could he try to convince anyone else?

“Did you bring your article, and the photographs for the pamphlet?” May said, sounding weary. “If you give us a hand tidying up, I’ll take a look at them afterwards, and we can—”

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