17

Tuesday, late evening

‘I meant what I said. You’re welcome to stay for the night.’ Peter Lazenby fastens the cufflink at his wrist. ‘I need to be downstairs in the club – I have business to deal with – but please, do stay. I’d like you to stay. Drink your way through the refrigerator if you wish, while you wait for me. There’s also some food in the kitchen, I believe.’

He unwinds the silk tie from the brass rail above her head and knots it around his neck, nodding at himself in the mirror. Ruby sits up in the bed, pulling the sheet against her warm skin, and watches him.

‘You’re taking a risk, leaving a thief alone in your house. I might walk off with the teaspoons.’

‘I’ll be disappointed if you don’t. Consider it a tip.’

He’s already left a pile of bank notes on the bedside table. A generous amount.

He sits on the bed and strokes her hair. ‘You know, if you’re in the mire, financially, there’s work here for a girl like you – and there are men downstairs who’ll pay far more than I have for a bit of fun. You could be sporting diamonds every night.’

Or feeding a cocaine habit like the dead-eyed, fluffy-headed creature she saw with Billy.

‘Think about it,’ he says again, tugging the sheet away from her chest and gazing down at her. ‘And maybe I’ll find you here waiting for me when I come home, eh? Ready to play some more?’

‘What time will that be?’

‘Around dawn.’ He checks his watch and smiles at her, taking her enquiry as agreement. ‘I’ll be imagining you in my bed while I’m away.’

She waits for him to leave and then cocoons herself in the sheets. The money is useful, but she has no intention of tying herself to a pimp; however charming he might be, she knows that’s what he is. He won’t be charming forever – not once he’s passed her around his friends for a ‘bit of fun’, and for a little less cash each time.

It will do her no harm to close her eyes for a while, but she’ll be gone long before dawn. And he might find his flat is missing more than a few silver teaspoons.

She wakes with a start. She had been on the edge of a dream – one that she cannot now recall – and aware of noises that were not part of it. Animals of some kind, screeching, whinnying, barking. And then a loud crack. She lies still, her heart racing.

She strains her ears. She can hear the dull thump of music in the club two floors below and some street sounds – men wandering home drunk as lords – but nothing more, nothing sinister or unusual. Just Soho noises.

She listens to the sound of her own breathing for a while and then switches on the lamp and swings herself out of bed, reaching for her handbag and her watch. It is ten past three – a long way off dawn, but time to be moving on. She presses the money he’s left into her bag and finds her clothes and shoes.

She tiptoes around the flat, examining Peter’s possessions. She’s not looking for silver teaspoons. Or cash. He’s flash, but he’s got class. The whole place is decorated in the latest style, but that’s just to impress whoever he brings here. He’s old money. He reeks of it. There will be something here, something small and discreet, that will be worth finding, like the watch he’s taken with him. She’s not just a thief: she’s been trained by Solly Palmer and she knows the sort of things she’s looking for.

There is a heavy-framed painting on the wall of the main room. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but it might be worth a fortune. It looks like the pictures Solly showed her when she was still a child, in the galleries. It is too big for her to lift. A small bronze statue on the mantelpiece might be better, but that is also too heavy, and she is not certain of its value.

She wanders back into the bedroom. She investigates the small table and opens the drawers in the tallboy. Under the socks she discovers a gun, wrapped in a handkerchief. Billy keeps his gun with his socks, too, when it’s not strapped to his body.

She can feel something else: a box. She pulls it out and opens it. She smiles at what she sees. This is what she was looking for: another watch, but old-fashioned – a pocket watch. It has a bulbous shape and feels heavy in her hand. Solid silver. The case is set with jewels that wink at her even in the dim light of the lamp. The back opens to reveal a delicate mechanism and a tiny engraving that she can’t quite read in the lamplight. This is real workmanship. It’s old, perhaps even a couple of hundred years old. And worth a packet. That’s what she calls a tip. She slips it into her handbag and replaces the empty box where she found it.

It’s time to go.

She leaves without being seen, back down the stairs and through the main entrance of the club. It’s busy, even at this time of night, and people are coming and going. They’re dressed up, still ready for a good time, she can see. Men who are worse for drink stand smoking in the doorway as she slips past, clouding the clear night air with their tobacco and alcoholic breath. One of them squeezes her arse and asks her if she’s looking for his company. She assures him that she is not, puts her head down, clamps her handbag under her arm and hurries away.

She would like to find a taxicab, if it’s possible at this time of night, and walks swiftly, hoping to catch sight of one.