‘You look lonely to me, sir.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’ve a room nearby. Would you like to come there?’
‘No, thank you.’
Her voice had real pathos. ‘Don’t you like me, sir?’
Peter was no stranger to the blandishments of prostitutes. London had brothels galore and areas where whores routinely roamed the streets after dark in search of custom. In the course of his work, he’d had to pursue suspects into some of the most notorious parts of the capital so nothing surprised him. Any offers made to Peter had always been met with a polite rebuff. What upset him in this instance was that she was a game-pullet, a prostitute little more than a child. Short, skinny and wearing a ragged taffeta dress, she had a forlorn prettiness.
‘Are you always here at this time?’ he asked.
‘I can be here whenever you wish, sir,’ she said, plucking at his sleeve.
He detached her hand. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I meant no harm, sir.’
‘Where do you live?’
Hearing the authority in his voice, she drew back as if about to flee the scene.
‘Have you come to arrest me, sir?’ she asked, anxiously.
‘No,’ he told her. ‘If you help me, there may be a reward for you.’
She brightened. ‘I’ll do anything you wish, sir. My mother taught me.’
‘I’m not buying your favours. I’m after something else.’
Speaking gently in order not to frighten her away, Peter explained what he wanted.
Unfortunately, the girl was unable to tell one day from another so she could not be sure if she’d been in the lane on the night he mentioned. He got a disturbing insight into a life robbed of its childhood and brutalised by the demands of the oldest profession. Peter’s instinct was somehow to save her but she was too far beyond redemption. Slow of speech and dull-witted, the girl could offer no real assistance. He was on the point of walking away when a memory stirred in her fuzzy brain.
‘I don’t know if I was here, sir,’ she said, ‘but mother was.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘She’s always here.’
‘Where is your mother now?’
‘She’s with someone.’
The girl led him down the alley until they came to a small house with perished brickwork and a broken window. As they approached, the front door opened and a middle-aged man in rough attire hurried out, pulling on his coat before disappearing in the opposite direction. Taken into the house, Peter winced as the reek of rotten food, mustiness and sheer despair hit him. The girl opened the door to the back room on the ground floor. Candles illumined a pitiful scene. A bony woman with rumpled hair and a powdered face was sitting on the edge of the bed. Completely naked, she was reaching for a filthy shift. She was amazed to see someone as respectable as Peter. Tossing the shift away, she exposed her toothless gums in a grin of welcome.
‘It costs more for the two of us, sir,’ she warned.
‘I only wish to ask a few questions,’ he said.
‘Has Lily already seen to you?’
Believing that she’d been robbed of a client, she looked accusingly at her daughter. The girl shook her head violently. Peter assured the woman that he was not interested in purchasing the services either of mother and daughter. Meeting the girl had been distressing enough but the older woman’s appearance was even more upsetting. Worn, undernourished and raddled, she looked old enough to be the girl’s grandmother but, when he studied her face, Peter was horrified to realise that she was probably around the same age as his own wife.He couldn’t bear to look at the deathly white bruised body with its sagging breasts and protruding ribs.
After dismissing her daughter with a wave, she stood up.
‘How can I help you, sir?’
‘It depends on how good a memory you have.’
‘Oh, it’s very good, sir,’ she replied, treating him to another view of her bare gums. ‘I forgets nothing.’
By the time that Sidmouth arrived at his desk that morning, a fair amount of correspondence had built up on his desk. He worked sedulously through it. Much of it had come from departments of government, which were passing on their problems for his consideration and making him bewail once again the fact that the Home Office was regarded as the place into which political colleagues could toss unwanted or tiresome material. It was only when he reached the bottom of the pile that he found something more arresting. It was the letter delivered at night. He read the document three times before summoning Bernard Grocott and passing it over to him. As the undersecretary worked his way slowly through it, his mobile features registered interest, astonishment, unease, alarm and outright terror in that order.