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

A hint of an amused smile tugged at Jago’s lips, but he regained his impassive expression as he turned back to Soper.

‘So as you can see, sir, DC Cradock has done very well.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Soper. His voice was hesitant and, thought Jago, a little suspicious. ‘I suppose he has.’

‘And deserving of congratulation.’

‘Of course, yes. Well done, Cradock,’ he said. ‘Well done. Keep up the good work.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Cradock. He smiled keenly at Soper, pleased by this approval and not least by the fact that as far as he could recall, this was the first time the DDI had got his name right.

‘Right, carry on, then,’ said Soper. ‘I’m sure you both have duties to attend to.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jago. ‘We do indeed.’

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

By a quarter to twelve Jago had completed his duties. The order to search had not yet appeared, but he’d briefed Cradock and would phone in later to check whether it had turned up. Now something else was in his thoughts, a far more pleasurable prospect: he was going to see Dorothy. It was only two days since he’d last been with her, but it felt like a week. This time he wouldn’t be sharing her with a crowd of other people, either. It would be just the two of them.

The first thing he’d done the previous evening when he got home from a long day’s work confident that he’d got Joan Lewis’s killers behind bars was to phone Dorothy. As always, his call to her at the Savoy reminded him that they lived in different worlds. Yes, she was only there because her newspaper had put her in the same luxury hotel as the rest of the American press corps, but that was only part of the difference. Their backgrounds were separated by more than the Atlantic Ocean, and he sometimes wondered whether the gap between them was any less bridgeable.

He’d wanted to know whether she’d be free for lunch today, and he’d been excited when she said yes. He was about to suggest he introduce her to some more traditional British cuisine when she cut in with a proposal of her own. It would be her surprise, she said: ‘Just meet me outside the Ministry of Information in Malet Street when I’ve finished my meeting there, and I’ll take you somewhere that I think you’ll enjoy. I should be out by twelve-fifteen.’

At ten past twelve Jago got off the Central Line Tube train at Tottenham Court Road station and took the short walk to Malet Street, in the heart of Bloomsbury. The ministry was housed in what had been for just the couple of years between its construction and the onset of war London University’s new Senate House, an imposing art deco fortress in white stone that soared nineteen storeys above the street in a demonstration of strength and solidity. To Jago it seemed like a piece of America transplanted into London, the capital’s first New York-style skyscraper: a home from home for Dorothy, perhaps.

He couldn’t help feeling some amusement at the transformation it had now undergone, in purpose if not in appearance: from the academics’ lofty pursuit of truth to something more banal. Taken over by the government when war came, it was now, he imagined, stuffed full of civil servants immersed in censorship, propaganda and no doubt all manner of nefarious tasks. He looked up at the rows of windows towering over the neighbouring streets and wondered which one of them masked the office of Mr A. J. Mitchell, the official who’d originally brought Dorothy into his life. He smiled at how he’d resented the idea of being forced to nursemaid an American war reporter. Now here he was pursuing her across London for the pleasure of sharing lunch with her.

She emerged punctually from the building and waved as she strode towards him.

‘Come along,’ she said, grabbing his arm and marching him back the way he’d come. ‘We’ll take the Tube.’

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘I’m not telling you – it’s a surprise. All I’ll say is we’re taking the Northern Line to Strand station, but then we have to get off because the line’s closed from there to Kennington.’

‘Why’s that?’

She lowered her voice. ‘Apparently there’s an unexploded bomb lying close to the tunnels under the Thames, so the trains can’t run.’

‘You’re very well informed.’

‘I am. I’m a journalist, and I know a lot of people with interesting jobs. But there’s no need to worry – I don’t repeat everything I hear. Except maybe to a policeman.’

She flashed him a smile, which he returned, and at Strand station he discovered she was right: this was as far as the train went, and all the passengers got off. As they negotiated the final steps up to street level Dorothy grabbed his arm again.

‘This way,’ she said, heading away down the Strand. Within moments they were at the south-east corner of Trafalgar Square. To their left was the ugly cocoon of corrugated iron thrown up round the equestrian statue of King Charles I to protect it from bomb damage, which Jago had last seen when he’d met Dorothy here a few weeks ago. But now something had changed: right beside it there was an area of rubble forty or fifty feet across where a crater had been filled in.

‘I expect you heard about the bomb,’ said Dorothy.

‘Yes, I heard there’d been something, but not the details,’ said Jago. ‘I see the king survived, though,’ he added, nodding towards the corrugated iron, which appeared unscathed.

‘Yes, but that’s only because the bomb went ten feet or more down into the ground above Trafalgar Square station before it exploded. I spoke to a man who told me they reckon it was a 250-kilo bomb, and he said ten people sheltering at the bottom of the escalator were killed. I can’t write about it, of course, because of the censors, but keeping these things out of the papers doesn’t stop people finding out – anyone who