Stella cycled aimlessly away from the brothel, trying to work out how to rescue prostitutes she couldn’t find. She thought up a few options as she pedalled.
Option one: grab a gangster. She was fairly certain she could find a member of the Sabinis and make him talk, but less certain that a random gangster would know the specific information she needed.
Option two: grab a cop. She could definitely find a cop, but she’d need one that was on the Sabini payroll and knew the specific information she required. Same problem as a random gangster, but worse, because a cop other than DI Donald would know about her.
Option three: grab DI Donald. She’d watched him for weeks. At this time of day, he’d be having breakfast in the little room he had and getting ready for his nightshift. She’d been in his room when he was working. It was delightfully shabby. He had this one incredibly threadbare, stained, ancient armchair that was so comfortable she’d fallen asleep as soon as she sat on it.
She didn’t want to steal his only chair, so she’d been trying out all the old, dirty chairs she could find, but none were as sleep-inducing as this one. She was actually contemplating swapping it out with a new, expensive chair. Something he’d appreciate, and then they would both win because he would have a nice, new chair and she would have the sleep-chair.
Stella turned right at the next junction and cycled down a new street, not paying attention to where she was going. She was thinking about what kind of chair she could buy to give to Donald. Something serious, and dark, like him. Oh, a nice Chesterfield, all dark leather and studs. Now that was a detective’s chair.
In front of her, the exhaust of a motorbus spluttered, and she braked, coughing, then wiped at her soot-stained cycling goggles with her sleeve. London traffic was no joke. Someone yelled behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, into the wide-lipped mouth of a horse. Her hair rippled as it chuffed at her.
“Ger a move on,” the wagon driver yelled again.
She gave him a petulant wave and started cycling once more. Where had she been? Armchairs? No, options! Right. Options.
Option four… was the only good option she had, and it was terrible.
She glanced around at the four storey Victorian terraces with tall, recessed doorways and black-painted doors. The faintly cool air brought with it the scent of the river. She could hear the distant traffic on King Street, but other than the bus and delivery wagon, this street was quieter. Definitely in Chelsea, it had that governess-making-you-watch-your-manners atmosphere she always associated with Chelsea.
The most striking thing was where the street ended, and the cable-stayed Albert Bridge began.
Stella picked up speed, heading to the Bridge and then veering left. The embankment was broad and lined with plane trees and cast-iron Victorian gas lamps. Governesses herded groups of children and well-dressed men took evening strolls with their wives. Pigeons searched for scraps along the gravel paths and cats slept in the flowerbeds.
She moved effortlessly between it all, building her speed, and by the time she hit Grosvenor Road she easily passed a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. The Georgian townhouses that overlooked the river here were old money. This was where the aristocrats lived, where diplomats stayed, and where old rich men sat in fancy buildings with their buddies and pretended a Gentleman’s Club wasn’t just an upscaled boy’s only Treehouse.
She passed horsedrawn carriages and errand running maids, outpaced a riverboat, and resisted the temptation to part the silk on her butt and moon the lot of them.
By the time she hit Millbank, pedestrians were little more than still images flashing by her. She hurtled past the tower she’d climbed with her mother and Farnika for a birthday picnic. Police yelled at her as she shot up Parliament Street, and one on horseback chased her as far as Whitehall, but the horse couldn’t keep up. Her long blonde hair streamed behind her, and if the wind hadn’t been stretching her cheeks into a freakishly wide grin, she’d have been smiling just as widely from sheer joy.
In Trafalgar Square, uniformed police directed the motorbuses, carriages, motorcars, omnibuses, and horse-drawn carts by hand, and blew their whistles when she ignored their signals and weaved through oncoming traffic. The suffragettes that were almost always protesting were absent, wisely deciding public opinion might be against them after their sisters had bombed the city.
She took the Strand so fast it seemed like everyone there was stranded, and she laughed as she thought of the pun, rearing up on her back wheel just because she could. She passed St Mary le Strand at speed and began to slow only when she reached St Clement Danes.
She turned off the main road into Middle Temple Lane and found a place to tie her bike up. Then she took a moment to compose herself, to calm from her mad dash through the city, and to prepare herself for what came next.
Fleet street, journalists, and the one woman who might know where the prostitutes were.
Her rucksack unspooled, her silk tentacles reaching out to their full twenty feet of length, and then the eight of them grabbed parts of the building before her and hauled her up. She landed with her feet on the brickwork and started striding towards the roof as her tentacles hauled her further up the wall.
The roofs here were slanted and had red tiles. Slates? She wasn’t sure what the roof tiles were called, but these ones were red. She moved onto the offices of Fleet Street, with their flat roofs. At the edge of this building, there was a drop to a much lower M-shaped roof. She’d seen this one from the street, with its black and white façade. It had somehow survived the Great Fire of London when everything around it burned, and they had preserved it.
She lowered herself delicately onto the ancient roof, not wanting to damage such a historic treasure, then carefully moved across it and climbed the opposite wall. The buildings here were all connected, the roofs separated by low walls, short climbs, or easy drops. It didn’t take her long to find the right one.
She stopped when she got there, suddenly wondering how to get Hildy Johnson up here. She didn’t want to enter a newspaper building, that was far more journalists than she was comfortable with.
She moved back to the 16th century building. Its roof was closer to the ground, and it had no ground floor. The open space below it connected Fleet Street to an alley. She crawled down the wall, out of sight, and paused there, like a great black spider waiting for a little fly.
It didn’t take long until she spotted one running up the alley towards the main road. As he passed under her, her tentacle shot down and grabbed him, dragging him into the air.
He hung before her, wide-eyed and completely silent, which was lucky. A scream would have attracted too much attention. Most people in London knew to pretend they hadn’t heard screams, but journalists sprinted towards them.
She looked over the prey she had caught. His short trousers ended just above his scabby knees. His legs were so thin she wondered how they held his weight. He had a grey blazer over a white shirt, and a little grey flat cap. A uniform of some kind, probably a school.
He looked to be about eight years old and he had started crying.
She shook him.
He cried harder.
She had shaken him gently!
“Stop crying,” she commanded.
“Don’ eat me,” he replied, through sobs that made his words difficult to parse. It took her a moment to understand him.
“I’m not going to eat you,” she said. “I need you to deliver a message.”
“I don’ deliver t’ ‘ell so don’ kill me t’take a message to ‘ell. I only does Fleet Stree’ t’ Parliamen’ an’ aroun’ Temple.”
“I need you to deliver a message to Hildy Johnson, in the London Eye office in Fleet Street. Only her, no one else, understand? Tell her to go to the roof.” She held a gold sovereign up before his face. “Bring her to the roof and this is yours.”
“Yes mum, straight to the roof, an’ I won’ even tell ‘er yer gonna eat ‘er.”
Frowning slightly, she lowered him to the ground and headed back to the London Eye’s rooftop. It was twenty five minutes before the rooftop access door opened and the journalist stepped out. She was wearing the same gorgeous black shoes as at the Land Registry, and a similar pair of trousers, but today’s cardigan was bright yellow with green blobs of colour on it that were vaguely diamond-shaped. The woman had impeccable taste in shoes and terrible taste in cardigans.
“Where’s the boy?” Stella asked.
“I gave him a shilling and sent him on his way. Honestly, what were you thinking, promising him a sovereign? If you’re throwing them around, I’ll have one.”
Stella shrugged and tossed her a gold sovereign. It hit her cardigan and landed on the roof with a sharp ting. They both stared at it.
“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Hildy said.
“I thought you’d catch.”
Hildy bent down and picked the coin up. “This feels like a bribe.”
“I’m paying you for information.”
“So it is a bribe?” She slipped the coin in her pocket. “Who are you? How do you do the things you do? Why was there a demon in an exclusive brothel in Chelsea? Why do you do the things you do? How are you connected to the Sabini gang? How is the warehouse fire connected to the brothel?”
“I feel like you should be paying me for information.”
Hildy slipped the coin from her pocket and tossed it back. It went wide. One of Stella’s tentacles flicked out and plucked it from the air.
“What are you?” Hildy asked.
“A concerned citizen. One who needs answers.”
“Ten minutes. Let me interview you. London needs to know you exist.”
“Those who need to know already do so. No, no interview. You answer my question and I leave.” Her tentacle reached out to the other woman, the gold coin looking luxurious amongst folds of black silk.
“I get five questions,” Hildy bargained.
“No.”
“Four questions?”
“No.”
“Three questions?”
Stella considered that. “You may ask after you have answered mine.”
“Great. Pure fanta.” Hildy plucked the gold sovereign from the silk. “I’m keeping this, too. What do you want to know?”
“Where are the prostitutes who were in that brothel now?”
“Where else would Sabini have put them after his Chelsea brothel was attacked? He’s found a temporary place for them in the heart of his realm, Little Italy. They’re in Hatton Garden, above a jewellery store. Why do you do what you do?”
Stella turned and walked away.
“Wait! You said I could ask questions.”
“I’m not stopping you,” Stella called back over her shoulder.
“You’re not answering me.”
“I never said I would.” Her tentacle caught the sovereign out of the air before she realised it had been thrown. That was something she would need to puzzle over later. Right now, she was dropping off the rooftop, focused on the prostitutes she intended to save.
Previous Chapter: Chapter Twenty-three
Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty-five
Author’s Note
For a bit of fun, the queerguide today lists who I’d cast in major roles if this was a movie. Come disagree with me.
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