The Lion’s Courtship E-Book

Annelie Wendeberg

• Herausgeber: Annelie Wendeberg
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Anna Kronberg Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The illustrated prequel of the award-winning Anna Kronberg Mysteries.
Anna Kronberg lives in Victorian London’s worst rookery, offering medical treatment to prostitutes, vagrants, and criminals. To her, plugging holes and mopping up blood is normal. Stitching the slashed face of a young prostitute is not. Witnesses refuse to talk. The police can’t be bothered with yet another injured whore. But whispers are spreading about a man who pays well for a few harmless knife marks. No one dares reveal the man’s identity. Only Garret O’Hare - a thief Anna barely knows - reluctantly agrees to help her investigate the assault. But when the injured girl disappears, a veil of silence descends upon the slum. And Anna learns that she is no longer the hunter, but the hunted.

Warning: medical procedures, poverty, and prostitution are depicted without apology.

Leseprobe

Copyright 2014 by Annelie Wendeberg

Illustrated eBook Edition

This is a work of fiction. Several characters, places, and names in this book are real, but long gone and have been used mostly fictitiously. The rest are products of the author’s imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Cover and interior design: Annelie Wendeberg

Editing: Tom Welch

ISBN: 978-91-989003-1-6

Bonus material at the end of this book:

Preview of The Devil’s Grin - Anna Kronberg Book 1

CONTENTS

Title Page

All you need to know…

Bullet Hole

Burglary

Birth

Whores

The Girl

Disappearance

Healing Arts

Sally

Scotty

Wrong Turn

Obstructions

The Man in the Mirror

Frankenstein

Baylis

The Deeds of Old Men

The Longest Knife

The Lion

The Deeds of Old Women

Dance

Epilogue

The Devil’s Grin

Anna Kronberg Mysteries

Arlington & McCurley Mysteries

Keeper of Pleas Mysteries

The 1/2986 Series

More…

Acknowledgments

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW…

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* * *

BookBub

APRIL 1885

The thief’s fingers slip over his lockpicks. Blood congeals at once — warm mud on gritty cast iron. The alley is as dark as a dog’s innards, for gas has been short this week.

Again, his fingertips probe the keyhole, then he chooses a lockpick of a different shape. He feels himself weaken by the moment. His knees are trembling, his tongue is so parched that his throat doesn’t permit a swallow. Blood loss is buzzing in his ears and the makeshift bandage cuts into his thigh, but fails to staunch the flow.

His last hope is on the other side of this goddamned door.

He presses his brow against the cracked wood. A cuss rolls up his throat. Then he calms his trembling hands, and sinks the tool back into the lock. Two clicks. His heart leaps.

* * *

A noise pricks her ears. Fear propels her out of bed before her legs are fully awake. Someone is climbing the stairs. Someone large. Someone who doesn’t sound like her drunkard of a landlord. And yet — could it not be an overdose of gin that makes his footfalls so unsteady?

She wraps a robe around her nightgown and snatches a knife from the kitchen, her knuckles hard as a row of stones from the tightness of her grip. She lights a candle and presses a bare heel up against the door. As though she could block an intruder.

A fist hits wood. Twice.

Her heart is pounding against her ribs. ‘Who is it?’

‘’Ave been shot,’ a stranger grunts.

She moves her foot a little and cracks the door open, peeking out with one eye. Candle light pours through the narrow gap. At first, her gaze falls onto his chest where the head of a person her size would be, then travels farther up. Fear creeps in with each additional inch. Streaks of blood darken his forehead and temples. A shock of orange hair. His eyes are pale blue, his face ashen.

For reassurance, she grabs her knife tighter and presses its handle against her spine. The blade is long enough to drive through a grown man’s chest, into his heart and lungs. Even a man that massive.

‘Pal o’ mine told me yer a nurse.’ His voice is a harsh groan. He blinks and sways, about to fall through the door.

She steps aside and admits him — a mere reflex. Heavy blood loss, shock. Her mind repeats her diagnosis while calculating the risk of getting hurt tonight.

She points him to a chair, reconsiders, then pulls it up to him. The door frame creaks as he holds onto it. He topples into the room and sits down with a huff. She slips the knife through the belt of her robe, reminding herself to keep facing the man at all times.

Blood leaks onto the floorboards. His right boot has left dark prints. Thick droplets trail from door to chair.

‘Lean back,’ she says, reaching toward him.

Shame wipes away his paleness when she helps him get his trousers off. She tugs at them, huffs and shouts, ‘Lift your hindquarters, man!’ and yanks them down. They get stuck on his heels. A final tug and the bloody things fly out of sight, his boots follow. Sharp scissors slice off the drenched leg of his drawers, the cold metal barely touching his skin. She fetches a tourniquet from her doctor’s bag and strangles his thigh.

His trembling is about to tip him off the chair. ‘Bloody Christ!’ he groans as she pours a burning liquid over the wound.

‘Clean shot,’ she notes. ‘Went straight through. Major blood vessels seem to be intact.’ The pair of long pliers she holds in her hand are chucked back into the bag. His panicked expression disappears with them.

She takes a roll of bandages and wraps them around his trembling thigh. ‘Can you stand up?’ she asks.

He makes a face like a puppy about to be drowned. His eyes begin to roll, lids flutter. His head tips, then his shoulders.

She slaps his cheek. Once, twice. The sharp pain pulls him upright. She tugs at his arm and barks an order he doesn’t understand, but he regains his senses, enough to stand on one leg, yet not enough to prevent him from slumping on her shoulder. They toddle a few steps. Then her mattress hits him in the face.

‘Holy show!’ he mutters and shuts his eyes.

* * *

The thief inhales the scent of fresh laundry. As he turns his head, his stubble scrapes along fine cotton. Is that…a down pillow? He never... His eyes snap open. Something that looks more like a cockroach than a child is perched on a chair in front of him. ‘And who are you?’ he spits.

‘Barry,’ the little dirtbag answers with a grin, showing his four missing front teeth. His hands and face are of a greyish-brown hue from underuse of soap and water. His attire is a mosaic of patches. Only the knife — with a blade the length of his shin — is uncommon for a street urchin.

The thief blinks. His brain feels a little sluggish. When he moves his legs, a jab of pain reminds him of the previous night. A woman had plugged a gunshot wound close to his bollocks. He had almost vomited on her floor. Or had he? A quick glance tells him the room is clean. Unusually clean. ‘Did you butcher the nurse with that thing?’ He gestures at the knife.

Barry rolls his eyes and squeaks, ‘She asked me to keep an eye on you.’

The boy is only six years old. At least that’s what he believes. He couldn’t tell what day or year it is, but he knows precisely that the thief could snap his neck without effort. To demonstrate the fearsomeness of his weapon and the fearlessness of himself, he taps the knife’s tip against his fingernails and extracts minuscule dirt sausages from underneath each one of them.

‘Why would she say that?’ the thief asks.

‘None of your business.’ The harsh dismissal sounds funny, coming from such a young throat.

The man pushes himself up and all the blood drains from his face. Grunting, he makes it to the edge of the bed and plops both feet on the floor.

Barry points his knife to the far side of the room. ‘She said you can go home if you make it all the way to your trousers without fainting.’ He speaks the last word as though he is a fine lady, or, at least, trying to sound like one. Not that he’s ever seen a fine lady, or heard one speak, let alone identify one should she cross his path, which — in itself — is quite impossible.

Squinting, the thief assesses the distance. His trousers are draped over a chair, the backrest peeking through the bullet hole. The blood is gone. She must have washed them last night. What an odd woman. His eyes search the floorboards again to make sure he has indeed not puked in this impeccable room. He can’t even find signs of his blood, let alone prints of his dirty boots.

He shrugs, pushes off the bed, and staggers forward. ‘Bloody Christ!’ he huffs and steadies himself on the wall. The room spins a little. He walks carefully, scraping one of his square palms along the cracking plaster of the wall.

At last he reaches the chair and lowers his buttocks. The wood gives a pitiful screech. With much effort, he inserts his throbbing leg into the trousers. The thick dressing hampers the progress. Sweat begins to itch on his forehead.

‘You look green,’ quips the boy.

The thief breathes heavily as he buttons his fly, and stands up. ‘I will take that chair with me,’ he says.

Barry’s eyebrows go up, all the way until they are hiding beneath his felt cap. He shakes his head and lifts the knife as a reminder.

‘I need it as a crutch. I’ll return it.’

The boy’s head is still wagging.

The man gets angry. His leg is aching badly and he isn’t sure how long he can remain upright.

The boy points with his knife. Bloody Christ, the thief thinks when he spots a makeshift crutch right next to the nurse’s bed. The usual variety of cuss words seems to fail him today. He touches his head to make sure he hasn’t been shot there, too.

Out on the street, the man’s stomach growls. He is so hungry, he could eat an entire cow, all with tail and horns and feet. Soup or pudding will have to do, though. His tongue asks for a pint of ale, but his mind calculates the budget. Home-brewed tea it must be instead. That disastrous burglary last night has left him with nothing but a shilling, a hole in his thigh, and a rent needing to be paid.

Huffing, he leans against a wall when he remembers his lockpicks. They are still at the nurse’s place. Too exhausted to hunt for food, he pushes towards his quarters — a small room in a run-down house. Yet, not as decrepit as most of the neighbouring buildings.

The familiar creak of his door, the smell of cold tallow candle, his bed in the far corner — all irresistibly inviting to shed his tiredness with a good long sleep. But first, he needs to quench his thirst. With three large gulps he drains all the water left in a jug. With a slice of stale bread in his hand, he shuffles to his sleeping corner. The straw crackles as his healthy knee hits the mattress. He pulls in the injured leg, curls up, chews on the crust, and begins to snore not two minutes later.

A shot jerks him awake. Or was it a bang at the door? There, another one. ‘Who is it?’ he grumbles loud enough to be heard through the thin wood.

‘It is I,’ she answers.

He tries to recall her name. Had she not given it, last night? He struggles to get up, glad he’s still dressed, and hobbles to the door.

‘You forgot your lockpicks,’ she says.

Her short hair shocks him. Her black curls, tucked behind both ears, can barely hold on to that delicate ledge. Did he not look at her last night, or does he simply not remember?

Her chest is nearly without bosom. With her high cheekbones and her nose and eyebrows as sharp as a bird of prey’s, determination screams at him from every feature. He almost takes a step back. She’s barely half your size, goddammit! he scolds himself.

When she walks past him, his gaze follows. Her shoulder blades move beneath the soft fabric of her dress and he thinks of folded wings too small for liftoff.

With his tools still in her hand, she points to his leg. ‘Surely Barry told you to change the dressing once a day?’

Dumbstruck, he shakes his head. She slams her bag on his table and lifts an eyebrow.

Unspeaking, he shuts the door and walks to a chair. His leg is happy it doesn’t have to support his weight any longer.

‘Take off your trousers.’

He coughs. His cheeks blush orange, almost reaching the shade of his hair as he fumbles on the buttons and awkwardly follows her order.

‘You broke into my house,’ she says as she unwraps the bandages.

‘I’m Garret,’ he mumbles.

She pokes a finger into the reddened flesh around his gunshot wound. He suppresses a wince.

‘What the devil?’ he shouts as she bends down, her nose about to touch his thigh.

‘Smells clean. No infection. Excellent.’ She straightens up, smiles, and the thief is ready to pass out. She just had her face in my crotch! his mind hollers. Almost.

The woman takes a bottle and a handkerchief from her bag, spreads brown liquid around the wound and gently dabs at it. Clear fluid seeps out the hole, mingling with the brown. The thief, now pale, tries hard to think of his grandmother — her last days, toothless, hairless, hallucinating, and pooping large round balls like a horse’s. It doesn’t help. He sees the woman’s gaze flicker to the conspicuous bulge in his one-legged drawers as she dresses his wound.

She straightens up and smooths the front of her dress. Her jaws are working. With a voice as frigid as the sleet rapping against Garret’s window, she says, ‘If you don’t wash with soap every day, your wound will get infected and you’ll die. I cannot cut that leg off so close to the hip. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to change bandages and disinfect the wound. Have a good day.’

The door slams shut.

Garret sits on his chair, trembling and unsure whether he can get his trousers back up without fainting.

* * *

As the woman steps out of the doorway, she wipes dark memories away, and shakes off her paleness. ‘Thank you for waiting, Barry,’ she says, and pulls the shawl farther up her neck. The boy nods, gifts her a smile, says, ‘See ya, Anna,’ and then he dashes off.

She hurries in the opposite direction, three blocks down a road crowded with people, their refuse, and hotchpotch.

She stops at a corner, takes a good look around to make sure no one is following her, and then sneaks into an alley to disappear through the back door of the cobbler’s.

“Cheap fish of St Giles” by J. Thomson & A. Smith, 1876

The conifer tickles Garret’s neck. He moves the twig aside and changes position, careful to remain invisible. The jemmy, his glass knife, a wood cutter, and a length of rope — all wrapped in strips of cloth — press against his stomach. He made his lockpicks with his own hands, and that’s where he keeps them, as his gaze attaches to a villa thirty yards ahead of him. One mightily splendid house if he’d compare it with the one he lives in. But he doesn’t. It would be a waste of time and energy. To him, this building is not the home of someone. It’s a strongbox he will pry open and gut.

Despite the late hour, light seeps through a pair of windows; all the others are black holes in the ivy-covered stone walls. The gate was locked just before supper, and the main entrance likewise a few minutes past eleven o’clock as the servants were about to retire. A well-kept household, it appears, with the staff having finished their chores before midnight.

The two lit windows, Garret learned his first night under the tree, belong to the bedroom of the lady of the house. Her husband, people say, took a bullet in his backside during the Crimean War. There it remained a few years, until his body gave in to recurring infections. The lover his wife had taken might or might not have sped up her husband’s disintegration. But disintegrate he did, and now he rots six feet underground, mucky London soil covering him head to toe.

His considerably younger replacement visits daily, often arriving around supper time, only to exit through the bedroom window around three o’clock in the morning. This man is an entirely different kind of thief. One no accomplished cracksman like Garret would want to be compared to. This man has taken a mistress rich enough to pay for whatever he fancies, until the end of her days. Every time Mr Lover leaves, he smoothes his fine clothes — crumpled from his latest climbing adventure — and pats a bulge in his waistcoat pocket and strolled off with a satisfied grin.

Garret knows that whatever is hidden in those folds of finest wool and silk will be turned into money as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Stomach yowling and wound throbbing, he shifts his weight ever so subtly. The church bells call four in the morning and the widow’s lover still hasn’t exited the house. The bedroom is dimly lit, but no movements can be seen.

Garret toys with his thoughts and his lockpicks, turning them over, feeling them from one side, then the other. He could do this tomorrow, couldn’t he? But there is the problem of an overdue rent, combined with a nitpicky landlady and throngs of squatters who would gladly take his room. A dozen or more might fit in, he figures. Garret sets his jaw. He can take a look, at the very least. Go in through the front door and not through a cut-open window pane. If he leaves no traces and takes something inconspicuous — pieces of knick-knacks no one will miss, but good enough to feed him for a few days and appease the landlady — he can return and take the valuables later. His stomach gives yet another painful grumble. His brain agrees.

With surprising speed and silence, the large man makes his way toward the main entrance. A moment later, he disappears in the shadows of the oak door’s deep frame. His hand touches the lock, its sharp little hole with indentations and spikes. His fingertips caress it like a lover’s, trying to tickle secrets from its depths. And yes, it accommodates his need and tells him which of his tools might fit. He tips his chin in acknowledgement, then tries one lockpick, then another, until he’s rewarded with two soft clicks.

Gently, he pushes at the door. It budges a fraction, then stops. He had expected the bolt. Garret chooses a slender metal sheet from his collection of tools and inserts it between the door and its frame. With a dozen small movements, he slides the bolt aside, then steps into the dark entrance hall and shuts the door behind him.

The silence outside is replaced by muffled voices. Dim light trickles down a stairwell. If not for his hunger, Garret would step back out at once.

No use in throwing a longing glance up those stairs. The jewellery will be in the lady’s bedroom, very close and yet unreachable.

He creeps through the hall into the first room to the right, strikes a match, looks around, then retreats. The drawing room contains nothing that interests him.

He takes a door to the left. Same procedure. Lighting a match, he takes in all the room’s details, etching the important ones into his mind before the flame can scorch his fingers. Darkness falls.

The voices are now right above him, muttering. The male voice defiant, the female voice accusing. Garret moves swiftly. He knows the distance to the objects of his desire, having seen them for a moment in the small bubble of light.

He snatches two tiny statues. A letter opener and a crystal ashtray find a new home in his coat pockets, too, and he is ready to leave. Just then, he hears a cry of ‘No!’

Garret presses against the wall behind the brocade curtains. Hasty steps clatter down the stairs, then a second pair of feet follows. A female, ‘Oh, my love, don’t leave me!’ quivering with despair. Both come to a halt, then move to meet at the middle of the stairs. A sigh and then another, before they make their way back up. As the bed begins to creak, Garret abandons his hiding spot.

Down on the street he chuckles, slapping his healthy thigh. ‘Womenfolk!’ he says and strolls towards St Giles. At the back door to the duffer, he steps in without knocking.

‘What’ve ya got?’ the scrubby man enquires, barely tearing his eyes off a well-thumbed book, its binding greasy, pages dog-eared. The man considers himself well read, although the reading of tuppence material with women in all kinds of positions, usually with at least one man attached to their orifices, doesn’t quite meet the classical definition of reading material.

The duffer remains sitting, not the least bothered by the Irishman’s presence. If he were to rise all the way to the tips of his toes, his nose might reach Garret’s shoulders.

‘Only the best,’ Garret says with false conviction, and holds out his square palm.

‘I’ll be damned if it ain’t the ugliest fat little angels I’ve ever seen!’ The man stares down at the two tiny figures, raises his bushy eyebrows at Garret, and knows this man is desperate. ‘Two pence each.’

They haggle until the thief’s brow perspires. Angry, he leaves. A public house is precisely what he needs now, or that howling stomach of his will scare off everyone, including the rats that scamper across his path.

Three pies and two pints of ale later, an elbow — complete with buffed sleeve and a cloud of perfume — pokes his side.

‘Oy, Thrulow,’ Garret says, ‘no gentlemen to flog today?’

Gloved hands flutter down upon his arm. Beneath her blue velvet dress, a corset shapes her body to a perfect hourglass. Thick blond curls pour from beneath the bonnet and course down her spine, cheekily pointing at her hindquarters. With her fine clothes, she almost looks like a lady, if not for that squeezed-up bosom. Birching some noble lord’s backside while a fricktrix was busy at the man’s front paid very well indeed.

She scowls at him. ‘Took a day’s vacation to see my mother.’

‘I see,’ says Garret, thinking that if she abandoned her calling for a single day only to see her mother, he would eat a broom.

‘You look worn,’ she purrs. ‘Fancy some recreational activities?’

He feels himself grow hot. The frisky and merry-arsed Thrulow makes his privates whimper. Not that he feels drawn to that bloody flogging business, but this woman’s backside surely has magnetic qualities.

‘I have no money,’ he replies. ‘Besides, I prefer to remain in one piece.’ And you are too expensive, he adds silently.

She pokes him again. This time harder. ‘You could do me, if you like.’

He jerks in his chair. Sweat itches in his armpits. ‘Thrulow, I have no money and I don’t like your birches, nettles, and whatnot. If I want to punch someone, I pick a fella my size. Never beat a woman and never will.’

‘Whatever you wish, my dear.’ The sugary lilt of her voice goes unnoticed by him. Her hand on his arm doesn’t, though. Heat spreads from there down to his balls. She moves closer to him until he feels her bosom press against his shoulder.

‘Good night, then, Garret,’ she breathes, mouth puckering, eyelashes waving. She turns around, and swings her buttocks more than necessary as she walks out the door.

With a groan, Garret presses his forehead against the wooden table top and counts to ten. He thinks of the last time he paid a woman. It was awkward and hasty, and not worth mentioning. Most of his encounters with the weaker sex were. Women who work the streets, and some who don’t but need the funds, willingly lift their skirts as long as a shilling or two are involved and a dark alley can be found. Where only the rats watch the rubbing, the grunting, the spending, and the wiping off of fluids. Often woman say one thing and mean another, he thinks, behave as though they don’t want a man, as though they are all well-bred and hard to get, all the while teasing him to come over and show them his prick. Why some of his friends get married is a mystery to him.

His heart produces a flutter — an alarmingly unfamiliar condition — as the nurse’s face shows up in his mind, her mouth slapping a command at him: Take off your trousers!

How come he doesn’t even know her name?

Barry squats on the pavement. Often he arrives much too early, like today, but the waiting doesn’t bother him. He keeps forgetting which days are the Tuesdays and the Fridays, but he does take his part-time occupation seriously. He calls them “pie man nights,” but only secretly, because he and Anna aren’t going out to eat. They work.

People here think she’s adopted him. But they have it all wrong. It’s precisely the other way around. When Anna arrived in St Giles (Barry believes it to be long ago, but it’s been barely three months), she stood out like a peacock with her clean and well-kept clothes (nothing fancy, mind you) and her funny English. That she must be in the possession of a few shillings (guineas, even?) that any half-talented ragamuffin could extract from the folds of her skirts, was clear from day one.

Barry had made a spontaneous attempt at pickpocketing, together with his gang of street arabs. Three of them bumped into her and toppled her over. Quick and easy. Barry probed her clothing with nimble hands. Even an idiot could have done it. But Barry could not find anything in her pockets. Not even a handkerchief. Quite outraged, he had demanded where that lazy devil of a bludger was. At that, Anna had calmly answered, ‘Well, no hole in the head for me today, I guess.’

Barry can remember this one statement more clearly than most things that have happened in his short life. He can still feel the wind in his gaping mouth. How odd that a woman like her knew what a bludger was — the strongest boy in a gang of arabs responsible for beating a victim unconscious. Despite that bit of highly unusual education, Barry was convinced she was a lunatic when she — still lying on the pavement — informed them in a strange sing-song dialect that she was a nurse and would offer free medical treatment to anyone in need.

He began revising his opinion two seconds later, theorising there might be at least some sense in her head when she said she would have to move to East End if she was to be mugged every time she crossed a street in St Giles. Besides, she stated solemnly, a nurse’s income is rather meagre.

Some crank in Barry’s head must have turned a wrong way then, because he blurted, ‘My mother used ter be a toffer,’ as though that would relate to the topic in any way. He refrained from slapping his forehead, because that would have given him away.

‘What’s a toffer?’ asked Anna as she stood and knocked the dirt off her skirt.

‘A toffer is a posh trooper,’ one of the other boys explained, eyebrows raised all the way to the brim of his cap, head bobbing. ‘Now she’s only a trooper. Old hag that.’

Deeply insulted, Barry had punched the boy’s stomach and received a whack in his face in return. Blood spurted from cracked lips, and Anna had her first patient in St Giles.

Later, Barry explained to her that a trooper is a prostitute of the most wretched kind. The mixture of love and shame in his face had touched Anna’s heart. She liked the boy at once.

* * *

For a while now, the two have been taking their nightly strolls together; the boy chattering away, the woman listening, her eyes sweeping the alleys. Often, all she can do is diagnose: syphilis, gonorrhoea, typhoid fever, consumption. With no miracle cure available, she suggests alleviation through rest, good food, and plenty of tea, but none of these are forthcoming in the slums. Rest results in a loss of income. To make tea one has to spend money on second-hand tea leaves, or find the ones others have discarded, and then use up the scant wood, cardboard, or — for the comparatively well-to-do — coal to boil water. And good food is entirely out of the question. Scraps, it must be. Pudding and stew from the soup kitchen. Anna knows all this, but has learned that saying something is better than saying nothing at all.

She performs simple surgeries, sometimes amputations. She helps reluctant children out of their mothers’ wombs, cleans and stitches up cuts. When, in a few months, the summer arrives and heats up people’s heads and makes them go wild about trifles, her supply of bandages, disinfectant, and opium will melt away in but a few days.

Tonight, Barry tells her everything he knows about skinners. Not that he has any personal experience, mind, because no street arab worth his salt would allow himself to be shamed like that. As Anna listens to Barry’s tales about the women who lure children into alleys and strip them naked of all their clothes and dignity — to sell the spoils for an ale or two — she strolls across Castle Street and watches how the evening sun dips the slums into a warm red, transforming tired faces into friendly ones.

Costermongers’ barrows rattle past, their wares sold, the men worn but satisfied. Prostitutes step down into the streets, shake out their skirts, and show their ankles. The cheeky ones among them even flash their legs all the way up to their stockinged knees. Passers-by with too limited a budget whistle appreciatively. Those who can afford the offered services curtly approach and mutter something only the woman can understand. Swiftly, an agreement is struck and the temporary couple enters the boarding house. The hour is yet too early and the clientele too sober for anything cheap and hasty, performed in the open.

As always on nights like these, Barry drifts towards the first mandatory stop — the penny pie man. Next to him, the man’s wife sits on the kerbstone, nourishing a youngster, her bare breast a flash of white amidst the grime. Her teeth are clamped around a slender pipe as she produces an abundance of clouds and stink.