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studded with bricks.
    There was that depressing smell of burnt wood and plasterboard soaked by persistent rain.
    I kicked a brick sticking up on the edge of the pile and saw something lying to my left. I bent and picked up a shoe. High heeled, navy blue, good leather and size 4. I didn’t need to be a Prince Charming to know whose foot this would fit.
    And she was no Cinderella. I brushed it clean and stuck it in my coat pocket. I looked but I didn’t find the other one.
    “Hoi! No looting here, laddy!”
    I turned to see an old man in a big cardigan and knotted scarf waving his walking stick at me. His breath ballooned about his head. I put on my best smile and walked over to him.
    “It’s all right, sir. I know the lady who used to visit here. She asked me to see if I could find her shoes.” I dug out the shoe and showed it to him. He still looked suspicious.
    “What lady would that be? I live across the road, you know. I see what’s going on here.”
    “She was using the house. It belonged to a friend.”
    “The Jamesons. Been abroad, they have,” he said triumphantly. Then his wrinkled eyes narrowed. “She a blonde?”
    I nodded. I bet this nosy old bugger watched every passer-by and all the goings-on.
    “She might be.”
    “Her and her fancy man?”
    “Could be.”
    His suspicious look had turned into a secretive know-it-all one. He was dying to tell me more.
    “You her husband?”
    I laughed. “No.”
    “A private dick, then.”
    So, not so daft. “This isn’t about infidelity, sir. Did you see the explosion?”
    His face fell and crumpled with annoyance. “I was asleep, wasn’t I. Near threw me out of my bed. Thought it was Jerry starting all over again.”
    “Did you see the ambulances?”
    “Oh, yes. But I couldn’t see what they were doing. Fire engines and everything.”
    I could see I’d get nothing else from him and finally had to be rude to get away from him. Lonely old bugger. I walked back towards the river and struck north towards Parliament, and to Soho beyond. I was thinking about those poor lasses that had been killed there, the last just four days ago. The trade of the victims, and the way they’d been butchered drew a pattern, but I couldn’t read it yet.
    Because of their precarious line of business the first murder had barely been given a mention among all the other news. Though for my own quaint reasons I had picked up on it and began my cuttings collection. But the second jolted the city, and the third began to set up a clamour. Now it was front page with headlines talking gleefully of the new Soho Ripper and “Jack’s back!”
    It was as though something wicked had followed me from the camp. I had a sense of their deaths, as though I’d known them or shared their terror. Maybe it was this that drew me towards their killing ground. Or my copper’s training. One day it would kill me.
    I walked straight up Whitehall, still marvelling at how so many of those grand buildings had survived. Parliament had taken a stick or two but they’d just moved to another part of Westminster Palace. Funny, the bombs couldn’t silence old Winston but we, the grateful voters, did. It wasn’t personal, he was just leading the wrong party. But it must have hurt.
    Nelson was still on his column. And pigeons had never left Trafalgar Square except to take a breather from the incendiaries. There was a lot of rubbish around. It had been a good night for some. The dustbin men were getting stuck in. I pressed on up by the Windmill with its signs claiming they never closed during the Blitz. They were promising a New Year’s Day special: half price for the first twenty customers. I slowed to take in the photos of the girls, splendid with their feathers and smiles and impossible legs.
    I walked along Rupert Street. It looked different to the other times I’d come here; daylight versus dark anonymity. I entered the little hallway and knocked on Mary’s door. Silence, but it was still only late morning: time for rest, especially if there had been