Hall nodded, lit a cigarette and paused for a moment. The door swung open and a rough voice called, “I told you to lock up.”

Ruby Moon stepped into the rain trying to put a mackintosh on. Big Harold reached behind and pulled her hair, making her cry out. “Cry? I’ll make you cry,” he said, and then slapped her twice across the face. “You need discipline. I’ll enjoy taking care of that.”

Harry turned to Joe Baxter. “Look at that. Neanderthal man come back to haunt us from the Stone Age, and it slaps girls around, too.” He moved her to one side and she burst into angry tears.

“Won’t do,” Harry said and removed his smart military trench coat, which he placed over her shoulders. “Do you know who I am?”

She’d stopped crying. “Oh, God, I think so.”

“For maybe you know my nephew, young Billy?”

“If he’s who I think he is, I do.”

“That’s good. Slip up to your bedroom. Find a few necessaries, put them in a suitcase and come back. Anything else you can get tomorrow. I’m losing Dora at my pub, the Dark Man at Cable Wharf, and you can take over the bar. Now hurry.”

“But this animal? What’s he going to do? He won’t let me go.”

“Dear me, I was forgetting.”

Harry offered his hand to Baxter, who passed him a.25 Colt with a silencer, and as Big Harold tried to step back, Harry shot him through the fleshy part of the thigh and shoved him back on the stair.

“Find him a towel in the gents,” Harry said. “And you get upstairs, girl.”

She ran up wildly, and Harry and Baxter followed.

Inside, George Moon was peering through a half-open door, and Harry could see a room lined with books behind him. Moon was small, balding and generally unsavory and, just now, sweating profusely. He retreated to his desk and sank into a chair.

“Harry, my old friend, is that you?”

“Old friend? You must be bleeding joking.”

Salter put his gun on the table and walked to a sideboard. “Whiskey-a large one, and feel free yourself, Joe.”