The Stratford Murder by Mike Hollow (best thriller novels of all time .TXT) 📗

to come from all over. Did you know? Before the war there were three fire stations in West Ham. Now there’s twenty-three, and we’re still fully stretched nearly every night. So I’m not in Carpenters Road often enough to know whether anything’s out of the ordinary. Besides, when you’re trying to control a fire hose with a hundred and fifty gallons of water a minute pumping through it you don’t have much time to study your surroundings. No, I’d say apart from finding a dead body in a bedroom, the only thing I saw last night that was a bit odd was that ARP warden, Mrs Parks.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By half past five on Monday evening Jago had been at work for nearly fourteen hours by his own reckoning, so he felt no guilt about keeping his appointment. He had arranged to meet Dorothy outside St Thomas’s Hospital and he was anxious not to keep her waiting. When they’d first met, she was just an American journalist he’d been instructed to chaperone round some of the bombed areas of West Ham, but of late – well, he’d noticed himself becoming increasingly concerned not to displease her in anything. It had come as something of a surprise to him to discover what an effect a woman could have on a man in a few short weeks, especially when that man was a police officer with twenty years’ service.

One of his pleasures in life was to see the Thames from Westminster Bridge, so instead of driving to the hospital he parked his car in Great Smith Street, behind Westminster Abbey, and walked back to the bridge. The late-afternoon light had begun to fade, but when he reached the river he could still clearly see on the other side of the water the hospital’s turreted Victorian blocks ranged elegantly along the foreshore. He could also see the effects of the recent weeks’ air raids. The block closest to the bridge was wrecked, as were two others farther south along the row.

Dorothy had said she’d be visiting the hospital this afternoon to interview staff about how they were coping with the bombs. She planned to write a feature for her newspaper in Boston, the angle of which, she’d explained to him on the phone, was to bring to life for the American reader the indiscriminate destruction of twentieth-century total war. Since the start of the Blitz in early September, more bombs had fallen on St Thomas’s than on the Houses of Parliament facing it across the river, and there was no way of knowing whether this was by design or just bad luck.

The wind off the river was cold, and by the time he was nearing the far side of the bridge it was beginning to bite through his overcoat. His watch reassured him that he was on time, and he was pleased to spot her making her way towards him. Even from a distance there was something about her that stirred an unforced sense of admiration in him.

It wasn’t long since he’d summoned up the courage to admit to Dorothy that he wanted to see more of her, but circumstances, his work and the war seemed to have conspired to keep them apart. Even worse – and he shuddered now with embarrassment at his own audacity – he’d confessed that his feelings for her were more than friendship. It wasn’t in his nature to throw caution to the winds like that, and as soon as the words left his mouth he’d felt a stab of anxiety that he’d gone too far, that he’d probably frightened her off. It was comforting, then, to see her looking so relaxed, greeting him with a warm smile.

‘Hello,’ he said, then stopped, uncertain what to say next.

‘Hello, John,’ she replied. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘It’s, er, good to see you too.’ He hesitated again. ‘Look, I’ve got the car parked across the river and I thought we could walk back over the bridge, but it’s getting chilly, so shall we hop on a tram instead?’

‘Sure.’

They crossed the road to where the trams ran back and forth on the northern side of the bridge and waited at the stop until a red number 72 slowed to a halt. They climbed the stairs to the upper deck as it moved off, and sat down. The seat was small, and as they squashed in together Jago held on to the seat in front, careful to ensure the swaying of the tram didn’t bring them closer than Dorothy might think appropriate.

‘How was your visit to the hospital?’ he asked.

‘Very interesting,’ said Dorothy. ‘Inspiring, too. They’ve had a bad time there. You could probably see for yourself it’s taken quite a beating. The first block, the one in ruins next to the bridge, that was where the nurses lived. A doctor told me it was hit in one of the first raids, at half past two in the morning, and three floors collapsed – one poor nurse was trapped in the wreckage for hours before she died. He said he was amazed that only five of the women in there were killed.’

‘I could see damage to some of the other blocks too as I came over the bridge.’

‘Yes, they said they’ve had other bombs since then that’ve killed more nurses and doctors, and they took me for a look around. The hospital’s been turned into a casualty clearing station, so they have to keep open day and night to look after people in the neighbourhood who’ve been injured in the raids. Everything’s in the basement now – the staff live and sleep down there. They’ve got wards there, even an operating theatre, and they have to do all their sterilising on primus stoves, so it’s pretty tough for them. One thing made me smile, though.’

‘Yes? What was that?’

‘You remember the time you showed me that statue outside the House of Lords that survived a bomb? One of your kings?’

‘Yes. Richard the Lionheart. He was still