“What to do? What to do?” she groaned softly to herself. There could be no railway journey back to Deal. Radleigh’s invitation to his flat for that evening had obviously been just to let his men grab her more easily. She looked quickly round. She needn’t have bothered. So many police officers, all shouting and waving their guns, made her safe from Radleigh’s men. There was no one else in London she knew—or would have dared approach. She thought of her bicycle. If she gave the Indian a handful of her French silver, he’d probably arrange for a new front tyre. She didn’t like the prospect of cycling back to the coast. But she’d been mad to come here. She really should have stayed in Deal. She could have thrown herself on the charity of one of her friends from the days before all the schools were closed. It would have been a few days before the next smuggling boat put in. A few hundred dried out cigarettes to ease her crossing, and she could have made her way to France. What Count Robert might be able to do for her wasn’t very clear in her mind. But he was her friend—that much she knew. Perhaps he could use another of his English contacts to find her parents. At the worst, if she had to spend a longish time among the Outsiders, it couldn’t be worse than dodging the police here in London. But how to get out of London? Would the patrol points still be unmanned when she got back to the start of the A2?
Oh—“What to do?” she cried louder. “What in the name of God to do?”
“You pray, my daughter,” the answer came from behind her. She turned and found herself beside an elderly priest. Except when being polite with the Outsiders, her father had never thought much of the Catholics. “Utterly superstitious God-botherers!” he’d always muttered as one of their priests went by. “Lean too close, and you’ll smell the whiskey and potatoes.” But they seemed to have taken over all the main welfare functions in London. As for the Anglicans her father had generally found time to praise—why, if not sniffing out and denouncing anyone who dared say he was following the wrong calendar, their main response to The Break had been to say the country was under the Judgement of God for the sins of racism and climate change denial.
The priest was still looking at her. “You must pray, my daughter,” he said kindly. “For those who pray with humble and contrite heart, the Lord will surely provide.”
Jennifer had been thinking to turn back towards Bond Street. But, as quickly as they’d gathered, the police were being called away. Not looking the priest in the eye, she nodded her thanks and hurried by. There were no shops beyond this point. But she could see if the British Museum was still open to visitors.
Chapter Nineteen
Jennifer pulled up the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She tried to ignore the butterflies in her stomach when she found that only ten minutes had passed since her last time check. 10:40pm, her watch said—over an hour to go before she was supposed to call on Radleigh. She corrected herself for the hundredth time. Radleigh hadn’t invited her round at midnight or any other time. He wasn’t expecting her. Because she hadn’t gone quietly with his men, he’d probably written her off. So she told herself. So, swinging back and forth between hope and panic, she’d been telling herself since the previous afternoon. She was now back to believing that any call on Radleigh would be madness. The priest had been wrong about the Lord’s willingness to provide—not that she’d so much as tried to pray. That had left her with nothing else to do but go and change her clothes, and then to drift, almost against her will, in the direction of Radleigh’s flat. She’d got to St John’s Wood when it was still light, and, when not making herself queasy on acorn coffee in a pub, had been peering round a corner at the block where Radleigh lived. Once darkness had fallen, she’d bullied herself into sitting in the pub. But this was now closed with the shutting down of the power, and she was back to her nervous inspection.
If she went up, it might be all smiles and assurances. Maybe her parents were already up there, drinking real coffee and looking at their own watches. Even as she thought of the hugs, however, and the mock-scolding words about her trip to France, she thought of the alternative—of Radleigh’s cruel face when he had her in his power, or of his casual telephone call to the authorities. Though flabby, he was big. On his own territory, he’d have the upper hand. Her heart beat faster. Another moment, and the earlier assurances were running through her mind again. Why get her arrested in his flat when he could have denounced her in the Liberal Club? Why draw attention to his connection with her father? As for attempted rape or murder—she reached down to her belt and touched the knife she’d bought off one of the girls where she was staying. Radleigh might be a big man, but she’d heard any number times that he was a physical coward.
The lack of street lighting made it easy to keep out of sight across the road from the block. She stood awhile, looking at the glow from the fanlight over the main door. No power cuts in there, she could see. Her mother might have commented on the additions to the service charge to keep a generator going—not that Basil Radleigh was a man to worry about the cost of maintaining a normal and even luxurious standard of living. Jennifer leaned back harder against the wall. Thinking of her mother had reminded her of something. She looked about. The street was empty. Every window at the front of the block was brightly lit. Radleigh’s flat, though, was at the back. Jennifer crossed the road into the shadows against the wall of the block. Again, she looked about. From her one previous visit, she remembered there was an open gateway to a back yard from where rubbish was still sometimes collected. She dithered. The gateway led in, and was then the only way out. But, unless she managed to think of something that would surprise her, it was this, or hang about till it was time to press the third button from the top beside the front door.
The yard stank of rotting food—now the survivors had learned to stay out of sight above ground, the rats could be missed for their cleaning function. In the light cast by the upper windows, she looked at the mass of twisted steel that began about seven feet up. This had once been the fire escape. During the collapse of order in the early days, the lowest level had been sawn away and the rest bent out of reach. “Not very good security,” her mother had sniffed when it was described to her. Her mother always knew what she was talking about when it came to buildings. And Jennifer could see now that anyone able to get onto the structure had an easy way into any flat that wasn’t secured by its own alarm or unbreakable glass. It hardly mattered nowadays, of course—the vacuuming up of everyone on the police database had left the better parts of London almost as safe by night as by day. Strange Meaters were for the suburbs.
If not sure what she was about, Jennifer didn’t think she was planning a break-in. She had the vague idea of looking to see what Radleigh was doing. Was he alone? How was he dressed? Might there be any indication of what she could expect if she chose to press his bell rather than slink away into a void of uncertainty? She breathed in deep and wiped sweaty hands on her jeans. She jumped up to grab hold of one of the lower struts. Easier planned than done. After three attempts, and only one ineffectual brush of a hand against anything solid, it was a matter of digging into the heaps of stinking refuse for something she could stand on. Again, easier planned than done. This was a world in which rats had been replaced by larger scavengers. The days when you could no sooner look than put a hand on a nice box or broken chair were gone. After a minute of poking a stick into heaps that always turned to slime after the first inch, it had to be a matter of dragging one of the steel bins itself into place—and doing this in a manner that didn’t wake the dead. But slime is a good lubricant and damper of sound. Clambering onto the fire escape, Jennifer could see that her mother had been right about security.