a crowd, and with her natural
agility it almost seemed as though her past had been the perfect preparation. Jazz knew she shouldn't take
pleasure in discovering a talent for steal-ing, but the thrill was undeniable.
"Well, what's your haul, then?" Cadge asked.
Jazz glanced around. By now the mark would have noted the theft, but unless he'd done so quickly
enough to follow Cadge, there would be no way they would be caught. She plunged her hands into her
pockets and drew out their contents. In her left hand she held the man's wallet. She hadn't checked to see
how much money he'd been carrying and it wasn't safe to do that here, but it felt thick with cash.
In her right hand she held his mobile phone. Down there in Harry's United Kingdom, they hadn't any
need for phones. No one to call. And it would be turned off by morning. But there was no telling when
they'd find a use for it, so when her fingers had brushed against it in the right-hand pocket of the man's
jacket, she had liberated it.
"Well done, you," Cadge said.
His own hands were empty. Today had been her first time hitting the street with them, and Cadge
had been as-signed to work the mark, not to do the actual nicking.
Jazz glanced nervously at the entrance to the platform. "We should go."
Cadge nodded. "Wait for the train."
Two minutes ticked past with excruciating slowness un-til the train pulled into the station. People
were disgorged and others got aboard, and then it rumbled away again. In moments, they were alone.
Cadge led the way to the edge of the platform. He glanced both ways along the tunnel. According to
Stevie Sharpe, there were other ways to get to the unused plat-forms at Tottenham Court Road, but the
tracks were fastest. With great care, they picked their way along the side of the tracks, retrieved their
torches from a nook where they'd stashed them, and fifty yards along they split off along a section of
unused track. The abandoned tunnel ran past the old platform, but they didn't slow. It wasn't the moldering
platform they wanted but this lonely, abandoned track. Fol-lowing it would take them back to Holborn
station, and from there they could descend to one of the older, deeper stations that had sheltered air-raid
refugees during the Blitz. They would meet up with the others and make their way back to Deep Level
Shelter 7-K, their sub-subterranean home.
Home.
A chill went through her. It was the first time she'd thought of the underground refuge as home, and
something about it felt very wrong to her. She knew she had to hide, knew that if she ever tried to return to
her real home, ugli-ness and murder awaited her there, perhaps along with truths and revelations she had no
interest in ever learning. But to think of the shelter as home was to submit to the idea of living there forever,
and that she could not do. Silently, she promised herself she'd never think of it that way again.
Ever since the moment Cadge had yanked up her skirt, Jazz's heart had been racing, adrenaline
pumping through her. Now, at last, far away from any chance of discovery, her pulse slowed and the thrill
began to lessen.
And then she heard the music, distant and tinny at first, then growing in volume. A plinking piano, a
jaunty violin, a tooting horn... and then a sudden chorus of wolf whistles and lecherous howls so loud that
Jazz felt surrounded.
"Oh, Jesus," she whispered, and clapped her hands to her ears.
Frantic, she whipped around, shining her torch into the shadows on both sides of the old track. With
the light shin-ing, she saw nothing at all, but when she swung the torch away, she saw spectral images in
the darkness left behind. The piano player, the violinist, and the trumpeter, who swayed his hips to get a
laugh. And the audience roared.
Jazz spun and saw them there, rows and rows of them, applauding. They were dressed not in the
thirties' garb of the spirits she'd encountered before but the clothing of an earlier era. Still wartime, though.
Always wartime. The mu-sic hall had phantom walls and curtains, a stage, and above her hung a ghostly
chandelier.
For a moment the whole room flickered and became a tavern full of men locked in serious debate,
and on the plate-glass window at the front she could read the reversed let-tering of the name of the place
—the Seven Tankards and Punch Bowl. Then the moment passed, the tavern blurred, and the music hall
returned, accompanied by laughter and those wolf whistles.
Voices called out a name. "Marie!"
"Marry me, Marie!"
"Get yer knickers off,
| <<Previous page | |
Next page>> |