sons. In fact, Colm and Toby could easily have been mistaken for my brothers. I was slightly above average height and had curves in all the right places. But I felt right away that none of this was going to help me with this man.
He set a file down on the table between us and flipped it open.
“Electra Niall McDonnell,” he said.
It was difficult to hide my surprise. No one called me Electra. Very few people at all even knew it was my given name. I hadn’t even put it on my identification card or ration books.
“Born 15 June 1916 at Holloway prison.”
I felt myself grow cold, like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. That particular detail was something only Uncle Mick and our housekeeper, Nacy, knew. How had this man come by it?
I tensed, waiting for the next bit of information, the piece of my life that was always there, hovering over me like a ghost I couldn’t escape, but he didn’t say it.
Instead, he looked up from the papers before him. “You’ve a remarkably clean criminal record for a woman involved in this sort of work. The safecracking was professionally done; this clearly isn’t your first endeavor.”
I said nothing. I certainly wasn’t going to admit to anything, but he was right about my record. We had never been caught before this. I thought it a pity that we’d had to start now.
“How long had you been casing that house?”
I didn’t reply.
“Did you know what type of safe was in the house before you went there?”
It occurred to me that both he and the man who had been here before him were extraordinarily interested in the safe. How did they know about it, after all? I supposed it might be surmised if they had discovered the bag of valuables, but those could just as easily have been left carelessly in a jewelry box or bureau drawer. He had no way of knowing that I’d been in that safe, and I had again the impression that something was not what it seemed.
“You don’t expect me to answer these questions, do you?” I asked him. “After all, though your officers neglected to caution me, I know very well that what I say may be taken down and used in evidence.”
He looked up, fixing me in his cool gaze.
“We’re not the police,” he said at last. “I’m afraid this is more serious than that.”
CHAPTER THREE
I frowned a bit at this. I might have thought he was bluffing, but I’d known from the start this wasn’t a proper police station. If this man was from the army, perhaps the people we had tried to rob were of more importance than we had realized. Uncle Mick was always careful about choosing targets, never anyone who was too important, who might pose too much of a risk, but it did appear that we’d miscalculated somewhere.
Why had this military gent come to have a chat with me in the middle of the night?
Thinking of the time reminded me again how tired and cold I was. “Might I have a cigarette?” I asked.
He said nothing for a moment and then rose and went to the door, pulling it open. He motioned to someone and a moment later returned with a cigarette.
As he handed it to me, I noticed the lighter shading of his wrist beneath his cuff compared with the bronzed skin of his hand. It hadn’t been noticeable at first in the bad lighting, but his face was tanned, too. He hadn’t gotten that coloring in England. He’d been stationed someplace much warmer and had, for some reason, been pulled in to question a pair of housebreakers from Hendon.
I took the cigarette without thanks. I wasn’t really much of a smoker. I had meant to get myself a bit of time to think and, if I was truthful, a bit of time to recover from my surprise at the easy way he had thrown out those private details about me. The casual manner in which he had mentioned my birthplace had rattled me more than I liked to admit.
I put the cigarette between my lips, and he struck a match and leaned to light it for me. I inhaled, the smoke working its way into my lungs. At least it would warm me up a bit.
“The work on that safe was excellent,” he said, as though we had had no pause in our conversation. “No marks or any sign you’d even