“Leave him alone, or I’ll bring the police.”
“Stay out of this, love. It’s not your fight.”
“Oh, yes? And what do you call it when my husband is getting himself mauled by the likes of you?”
“You’re married to…this?”
“He may not be much,” she said, “but I’d just as soon not have him skewered over some tiff in a pub. Now would you be kind enough to help him up so I can bring him home?”
A tense moment passed, the blade still shining under the room’s lights. Then a pair of rough hands folded the switchblade shut. It disappeared into the long slash pocket of the peajacket. “He’s your problem, love. Help him yourself.”
“Jaysus,” one of the others said, “bird like you and an old harp like him. No bleeding justice, is there?”
“Bastard.” One of them got in a final kick, wiped the sole of his work boot on Malcolm’s shirt. Then the men’s legs went away. The woman’s stayed.
Malcolm wanted to raise his eyes, to look at the woman’s face, but his arm had started to throb and he found himself slipping in and out of consciousness.
The stockings took two steps forward, skirting the smear of filth beside him. The woman lowered herself to a crouch. The light was behind her and Malcolm could only faintly make out her features. She had a sharp widow’s peak and fair skin, and the largest, saddest eyes he could remember seeing.
“You’re Malcolm Stewart?” she said.
He nodded. She looked as though she’d been hoping he’d say no.
“Look at you,” she said. “I can’t take you to him like this.”
“To whom?” he said. He felt dizzy. “Do I know you?”
“My employer. He asked me to bring you to him. He has—” She paused to look him over again, and the disappointment in her voice was undisguised when she spoke. “He has an assignment for you, Mr. Stewart.”
“…an assignment?”
“I told him it wasn’t a good idea. I told him the reports he had were years old. But Mr. Burke’s not one to be put off.” She took him by his undamaged arm, pulled him not too gently to his knees. “Come along, Mr. Stewart. Let’s get you bandaged up and bathed, what do you say?”
“I say,” he mumbled, trying to think of the words. “I say ‘thank you’?”
“Well,” she said, “it’s a start.”
The iodine stung and the bandage smarted. He’d burned his tongue on the coffee she’d given him, and his chest was erupting with colorful bruises. His head was still ringing. But he’d showered (carefully, leaning against the wall) and he could feel sobriety returning to him, timidly, like a husband tiptoeing back into the house after an evening’s debauch.
“Have you got a name?” he said. “Or would you rather I just thought of you as an anonymous benefactor?”
She was watching him from one of the bedroom chairs, legs crossed primly at the ankles, hands laced in her lap. She had an admirable figure and a face just this side of beautiful. And she was young, too—still in her early twenties, Malcolm guessed, which would make her less than half his age. He could understand why the lads in the bar might have had a hard time picturing them as man and wife.
“My name is Margaret Stiles. But that’s not important. Only Mr. Burke is, and what he wants to talk to you about.”
“And what is that?”
“He’ll want to tell you himself.”
“I see.”
“Please choose a shirt and get dressed,” she said. “We shouldn’t keep Mr. Burke waiting.”
There were three shirts laid out on the bed. Malcolm selected the softest of them, a red flannel, and drew it on over his bandaged arm. He winced as he buttoned it.
He was still wearing his own pants—they hadn’t been spattered as badly. And the boots were his as well. A quick dunk under the tap had restored them to whatever prior vitality they might have claimed. His shirt had been ruined. He imagined it was now being incinerated in some hidden chamber of this house.
“Your Mr. Burke knows I’m here?”
“I spoke to him while you were in the shower.”
“And he wants to see me now?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Why ‘in a manner of speaking’?”
“Come on,” she said, standing up. “We’ve lost enough time.”
“I want to know what you meant. He doesn’t want to see me?”
“I imagine,” she said, “that he would like to see you more than anything. But that’s hardly an option.”
“Any why is that?”
“His eyes, Mr. Stewart. He was blinded in North Africa.”
North Africa. The words brought a rush of painful memories. The press toward Libya, the desert winds in his throat, the baking heat, and in the middle of it all, between spells of tortured boredom, the moments of utter chaos: the mortar rounds tearing great gouts out of the sand, and out of the men who sped across it. So Burke had been an 8th Army man? And had paid for it dearly, though not so dearly as some.
“I’m sorry,” Malcolm said. “I was in that campaign myself.”
“I know you were,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons he selected you, though perhaps he’ll think better of it once he meets you.”
“That’s rather harsh, my dear.”
“Harsh? Look at you. And what he’ll ask of you, Mr. Stewart…it’s ever so much worse than dealing with those three in the pub.”
“I’ve dealt with worse.”
“Yes, but recently?” She waited, but he had no answer for her. “Now will you please follow me?”
He stepped out into the hall. She led him down to the main floor on a staircase wide enough to hold four men abreast. The building was deceptive: From the front as they’d come in it hadn’t looked nearly as big as it turned out to be once you were inside. There was money behind this Burke, generations of it. It didn’t show in ostentatious ways—no chandeliers dripping with crystal or gold leaf on the picture frames. But the pictures themselves looked like they’d fetch a pretty sum at auction, and the carpeting was the sort that costs as much as most people spend to furnish their entire homes.
They passed from the entry hall into a library, and on through a short connecting corridor into the kitchen, where a woman in a cook’s smock stood cutting potatoes into a copper kettle. She looked up as they passed. He thought he spied a look of pity in her eyes.
“Another, Miss Stiles?”
Margaret moved them along without slowing.
Malcolm looked back over his shoulder. The woman was still watching, knife at the ready, supper temporarily forgotten.
Malcolm didn’t say anything till they were out of earshot. “What did she mean, ‘another’?”
“Never mind her.” Margaret stopped at a closed door. She tugged on a brass pull set into the doorframe at eye level. He could hear a bell ring within and, moments later, a man’s voice called out. “Miss Stiles?”
“Yes.”
“Have you got Mr. Stewart with you?”
“Yes.”
“Bring him in.” It was a deep voice, muffled by the door, but strong, Malcolm thought, and self-confident. He was put in mind of his commanding officers from the army—it was the sort of voice you were trained to use when marshalling troops for a charge across a noman’s zone. Some men didn’t need to be trained, of course. They’d learned it in the nursery or had it bred into them from birth.
Margaret swung the door open. He was surprised to see no light behind it. She made no move to turn one on.
“Come in, Mr. Stewart,” the voice intoned. “Don’t let the darkness bother you. Miss Stiles will show you to a chair.” She took him by the arm and steered him through the room, navigating obstacles he could see only dimly. It was oddly damp in the room, as though a window had been left open, but the only windows he could make out appeared to be shut and heavily curtained.