The Unquiet Heart by Gordon Ferris Read Free Book Online Page B

us in the same pub. Unless
they were watering the beer.
    “Right. You all know your job. Midge takes one boat, Cyril takes the other. I’ll be with Midge, Stan goes with Cyril. And remember – no killing! This isn’t Jerry. Hear
that, Cyril? No knives, no garrotting, and absolutely no guns.”
    “What if they’ve got ’em?” asked Cyril, disappointed.
    “Or there are ten of them,” chipped in Stan.
    “You’ve got surprise and experience on your side.”
    “You sound like my old sergeant major just before he sent us out against a Panzer unit,” said Cyril.
    “What happened?” asked Stan.
    “We lost,” said Cyril dryly.
    “Still, we’ve got these.” Midge picked up one of the pickaxe handles he’d brought and thwacked it into his hand with a ringing smack.
    “But try not to brain them, fellas, OK? We want to hand them over to the bobbies in one piece, everything in working order. If we can.”
    I stared each one in the eye till I got the look that said they understood.
    “There’s one other thing. We’ll have a passenger tonight. A reporter who wants a scoop. I’ll take personal responsibility. None of your names will show up.”
    “What the fuck, Danny? A passenger? This is no time for a fucking passenger,” said Midge.
    “I said it’s my responsibility. OK?”
    There were a few more grumbles but no serious objection. I wonder what they’d have said if I’d told them the reporter was a girl? One shock at a time.
    At eight o’clock I was walking along the cobbles towards the Anchor Tap, a pub in Horselydown Lane, the frontier to a run of narrow streets and warehouses just down river
from Tower Bridge. The streets were empty; the warehouses shut for the day, and all the workers – draymen and lightermen – safely home with their feet up listening to the wireless and
reading their paper. Sensible blokes. But they’d left their spoor on the air like a tribe that had just folded its tents: acrid fumes of coal fires from guttering braziers, the sharp stink of
urine and dung from the Clydesdales, and ripe malt and hops from the Anchor Brewhouse. It set my senses alight and made me wish I was meeting this girl for a quiet drink instead of a gang for a
midnight ruckus.
    I pushed though the swing doors, into the bar area and ducked into the little back room behind it. Four rough lads were throwing darts, another was sipping his pint and scanning the racing
section, and a bargirl stood polishing her counter and dreaming of the first kiss from her beau when she got off work at ten.
    No Eve. Late, as usual. I turned to walk through to check the other rooms when the fella with a paper coughed. I turned. He was waving at me to join him. Then I saw the dark eyes below the brim
of the flat cap and the slenderness of the hands holding the paper. I nearly burst out laughing. I signalled to her to follow me and went on ahead. One of the darts players gave me a funny look as
though he’d spotted a rendezvous between homos.
    The Tap is a warren with a dozen boltholes downstairs and up. I took a seat in an empty room down the narrow corridor and waited. She appeared in the door clutching her paper and her pint.
Smaller than your average bloke but no midget, she wore a scruffy pair of flannels, a jacket that must have come from a jumble sale of lads’ cast-offs and a creased blue shirt and tie. I
guessed she’d bound her breasts to keep them flat. The boots looked like genuine labourer’s with hard toes and plenty of scuffs. Her face was scrubbed of make-up and showed off its
strong lines. Her tangle of hair had been ruthlessly shoved under her cap. It bulged under the strain. In a weird way the look suited her, and I had a very odd fancy to grab this pretty lad and
give him/her a sound kissing.
    “You look like a docker. Quite a pretty one, mind.”
    “Was that a compliment?”
    “For what we’re up to, yes.”
    “What do I have to do?”
    “Nothing. You are here purely as a spectator. If