Page 6

chapter six

Gabriella almost didn’t tell Mr. Greenberg about the electrocution.

She’d been involved in a lot of trouble so far in this job, and while it hadn’t been her fault, she had a feeling it reflected badly on her. It made her worried Mr. Greenberg might consider letting her go.

She didn’t want to lose her position—it paid better than secretarial work, and helped fund her search for her father. Every week that went by that she couldn’t find the bastard, dead or alive, was another week her mother and Gino couldn’t get married.

So it was with hesitant steps that she approached the boss.

“Miss Farnsworth?” Mr. Greenberg was coming from the staff kitchen, walking back to his office, and she waited outside his door for him.

He ushered her in, a cup of tea in hand, and waved her into his visitor’s chair.

“What brings you to headquarters early?” He set his mug down on a spot which, judging from the number of water stains in the wood, was its habitual place, and leaned against the desk.

“The police insisted, sir. They put me in a car and dropped me here.” She hadn’t been able to argue with James without making a fuss. “There was a run-in with a driver.” She worried her lip.

“Tell me.” He steepled his fingers and tapped them against his salt and pepper mustache.

She cleared her throat. “I fined him yesterday, and then today he was parked even worse, on double yellows, partially blocking an entrance, but when I touched his car I got a shock and landed on the pavement. A detective constable was there, investigating that body I told you about yesterday, and he also got a shock.”

“A shock, as in an electrical shock?” Mr. Greenberg asked, voice sharp.

She nodded.

“This is not the first time I’ve heard of this. Someone at the fruit and veg market at Covent Garden said something about trucks . . .” He frowned, trying to remember.

“Yesterday, when I gave him his fine, the man did say something about twenty trucks coming in on market day. I think he’s a farmer.” Gabriella relaxed a little. Not that she was glad someone else had been electrocuted, but that this wasn’t a ‘her’ problem.

“You landed on the pavement, you say?” Mr. Greenberg studied her. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “There was a doctor in the crowd that gathered around. He told me to seek medical help if I feel faint or my heart starts beating too fast, but that I should be fine. Detective Constable Hartridge is also fine, but he and Detective Sergeant Archer want to press charges.”

“Press charges?” Greenberg shook his head. “My counterpart in Covent Garden says they’ve tried that. There isn’t a law against it. The bounder electrifies his car and then backs it into his trucks, all parked touching each other in a long row. No one can put a notice on any of them without being shocked. And because they’re all his private property, he gets away with it.”

“Detective Constable Hartridge made the point that if a child had touched it, they could have been very seriously hurt.” Gabriella was angry all over again just at the thought of it.

“I agree.” Mr. Greenberg turned and faced his map. He’d put it up after the murders she had been involved in a few months before and had begun tracking incidents on it. He picked up a yellow pin and tapped the borough of Chelsea with a finger. “Where did this happen?”

Gabriella got up and pointed to the spot.

Mr. Greenberg put the pin in.

“The yellows are attacks on wardens?” she asked, noticing other yellow pins dotted through the map for the first time. Most of them were in Kensington and Chelsea, but that made sense, because that was Mr. Greenberg’s own area of responsibility. Any other incidents would have to be told to him by the heads of the other traffic warden stations.

“I’ve gone through all the reports, starting from three weeks ago,” Mr. Greenberg said. “I’m also tracking all deaths that involve my wardens, either as a witness or called on as an authority figure.”

The body she’d found the day before was on the map, she’d been here when he’d added it, but now she saw there were two others.

“A homeless man,” Mr. Greenberg said, tapping the red pin that was in Kensington Gardens, and Gabriella remembered hearing about a body being found under the bushes in the park.

“And this one?” She hadn’t heard about another death, and this one looked very close to her own route.

“The body was found in Hammersmith and Fulham,” Mr. Greenberg said. “I only got word of it when I had dinner with some other head wardens last night.”

Hammersmith and Fulham was the borough to the west of Kensington and Chelsea, so that explained why she hadn’t heard anything about this, but as the crow flew, it was close. “Another homeless person?” Gabriella asked.

Mr. Greenberg’s shoulders lifted. “Not sure. The body was found in an allotment garden, half-buried in a trench the gardeners were digging to deal with a flooding issue. I don’t know if the coroner has issued a finding yet.”

She would ask James when she saw him tonight. He had said he would be round to check on her.

She took a step away from the map. “It’s only halfway through my shift, sir, I better get on.”

He looked at her from under bushy gray eyebrows. “You’re going home, Miss Farnsworth.”

She shook her head, holding her hands tight together. “I really am fine. My arm felt strange for a while, and I felt a little dizzy, but honestly, that’s all gone now.”

Mr. Greenberg looked at her. “You’re an adult, and know yourself. If you think you can go on, that’s fine, but if you feel any effects at any time, you come in, is that clear?”

She nodded meekly and left, relieved that he trusted her to know what she could and couldn’t do.

She stepped back out onto the street, and stopped short. A dark green Jaguar was parked a little way down the road. The station was on a street that ran parallel to the main road and ended in a cul-de-sac. While a footpath allowed pedestrian access to the main road from both ends, cars had no through way.

The car had obviously gone down the street, turned at the tight circle at the bottom, and come back up.

She tried to make out who was sitting in the driver’s seat.

She had had a nasty run-in with a man who drove a green Jaguar some months ago, and she had thought a few times that he’d been following her.

That worry had faded over the last month, she realized. She hadn’t thought of him in a while, but here was a Jag, parked near the station, and there was definitely someone sitting in the driver’s seat.

She would never be safer than now, she decided. She was right outside the station. There were people about, and it was midday.

She stepped off the pavement, making straight for the car, determined to pass in front of it and see who was behind the wheel.

As she got halfway across the road, the car’s engine revved, and began to edge out of its parking space.

Gabriella changed her trajectory, not wanting to put herself right in front of a moving car. Instead, she headed for the driver’s door. Forget politeness, she wanted to peer right in.

With a squeal of tires, the car lurched out, clipped the bumper of the old Morris Minor parked in front of it, and roared off.

Gabriella stood in the road, her focus on the Jaguar as it drove away. She had gotten the look she needed.

The man behind the wheel was definitely the man who’d tried to assault her a few months back.

He had refused to look at her or meet her gaze as he pulled out and drove off, but she recalled his jowly face and red cheeks, his blonde mustache, all too well.

She hadn’t been mistaken. He had been following her.

The question was, why?

She lifted her shoulders high, then relaxed them down, trying to shake the tension off, and then turned and walked back into the station, going straight through and out the back entrance.

It was how she went home every afternoon, and if she took this way, she could cut across further down the road and end up on her usual route. It was a roundabout way of doing it, and it would take her longer, but she was deeply disturbed by Mr. Jaguar’s interest in her, months after their clash.

She thought about their interaction as she walked, her head on a swivel, although he would not have had time to get from the main road to her current position if he was still in his car.

She kept close to the railings of the large townhouses she passed, moving at a fast pace.

When she saw a flash of dark green up ahead, she ducked down a set of basement stairs. She stood halfway down, on the slick stone of the steps, grabbed the metal railings above her head and rose up on tiptoe, her face pressed between the metal bars so she could see onto the street.

A dark green Mini Cooper drove past, and feeling a little foolish, but still with heart thumping, she walked back up onto the street and went on her way.

She felt a constant fizz of adrenalin in her blood for the rest of the afternoon, although she didn’t see a green Jaguar again.

Either the man didn’t know her current route—and that might have been why he had parked outside the station, so he could follow her— or he had somewhere else to be this afternoon.

She was exhausted by the time she made it back to her flat. Mr. Rodney was not in his garden, and given that it looked like it would start raining any moment, she didn’t need to guess why.

She loved talking to him, but today, she just wanted to get home, curl up under a blanket, and close her eyes for a little bit.

As she stepped inside, Solomon was coming down the passage from the direction of Mr. Rodney’s flat, heading out.

“Gabby,” he said.

She smiled back. “Hey, Solomon. How’re things?”

His gaze sharpened on her face. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “A long day. I got electrocuted, and then someone who I fined a while back was waiting for me outside the station.” She lifted her shoulders, surprised at herself for telling him.

“Electrocuted? On the rail?” He tilted his head.

Solomon worked for British Rail, at least some of the time, and she guessed his mind had gone straight to the trains.

She shook her head. “Some farmer electrified his car so no one can attach a fine to it.”

Solomon laughed, eyes widening, and then they narrowed. “It’s funny, because fines aren’t fun, but it hurt you?”

“It did.” She didn’t have to put up a front here. Solomon was a friend, as well as Mr. Rodney’s nephew.

“Then it’s not funny. You’re just doing your job.” He straightened the sleeves of his dark green jacket, and she noticed a pale green neck scarf knotted around his neck. He was the best dressed person she knew, even beating out Liz. But then, she had a very strong suspicion he had plenty of lucrative sidelines, and some of them were not strictly legal.

“No. It wasn’t funny. But it looks like it isn’t actual illegal, so there’s nothing we can do about it.” She turned toward the stairs. “I’m just going to get an early night.”

“What about the creeper waiting for you outside the station?” Solomon asked. “Who is he?”

She lifted her shoulders again. “Some uppity Hooray Henry. He drives a dark green Jag and has a temper.”

“I’ll tell the boys to look out for a dark green Jag. Got the number plate?” he asked.

She gave it to him, and he nodded.

“If we see him, we’ll let you know.” He walked to the door and gave a final wave as he went out.

She didn’t believe him.

The boys wouldn’t just let her know. They would probably have words with Mr. Jaguar.

And as long as they were able to do it without getting themselves into trouble with the police, she was happy for them to have at it.