Fitzrovia Twilight (Nick Valentine Book 1) Read Free Page A

go to.”
    “I was cashiered.”
    “Think of your duty, man!”
    “I did my duty from 1916 onwards, more than my fair share,” Nick said quietly, “so don’t talk to me about duty. Besides duty doesn’t pay the bar tabs.”
    “Ah, now we get to the crux of it. I forgot you spend your time swilling around the West End in a haze of liquor. Those must be some awfully large tabs.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Why does a man like you walk away from the King’s commission? For what? To spend your time skulking around the West End with gangsters and immigrants?” He shook his head. “An officer,” he sneered, “slumming it. I don’t get it.”
    “You don’t have to get it.”
    “It helps me if I do get it. Why aren’t you sticking with your own kind?”
    “I had enough of what you’d call my own kind in the war. Have you been to war?” Nick let the question hang, enjoying the fleeting look of discomfort on Carruthers’ face before he brusquely changed the subject.
    “I’ll have to get authorisation, but I’ll offer you a weekly wage of half pay from what you were on. Cash.”
    “Half?” Nick shook his head.
    “Look, this might be a chance for you to get back in the game. Look at you: early thirties, already washed up and washed out, living off a pension and scratching around for work from petty gangsters and their molls. This could give you something worthwhile.”
    “You presume to know an awful lot about what I consider worthwhile, Mr Carruthers. Someone is already dead; I have no intention of joining them.”
    “Really? I’m told you don’t remember getting home last night. No one saw you after you left the Black Horse pub dead drunk just before midnight. You can’t even tell me where you were apart from at home, on your own. You could have killed her.”
    “Could have, we both know that, but didn’t.”
    “Funny, our man’s at your apartment; he just found the gun there that was used to shoot Julia Cortez…”
    Nick thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and felt the comforting smooth warmth of his brass knuckleduster. He had to fight the urge to smash it into Carruthers’ face. He calmed himself. “You wouldn’t.”
    “And I wonder if your companion Miss De Vere would be quite so keen if she knew what happened in Vienna, and why you had to leave the FO quite so soon. Not to mention some of the very patriotic, but thoroughly nasty things you did before that. You know how this works, Mr Valentine. Hell, are you even sure you didn’t do it? I’m not.”
    Nick felt his jaw twitch and he was suddenly aware of the pressure on clenched teeth. He exhaled with a hiss of air. Carruthers had voiced something that Nick had been wrestling with since he stumbled onto the body in the alleyway. He didn’t think he’d done it, but he had to admit, the possibility existed, only that would have made no sense, but then experience told him death rarely did. What price his own piece of mind?
    “Well, in that case, I suppose I’ve got myself a job,” Nick replied after what felt an age.
    “Good. Find out what you can. I can give you some names: Jurgen Platt, German, closest known associate of Cortez is someone we’re interested in at this point. His known associates, Bruno Manzelli, political consul at the Italian embassy, and Gunther Braun, German also. Gunther and Jurgen share a flat and run an import/export business from an office in Soho, with a warehouse in Wapping. However, you’re most likely to find them at The Blue Rose Club. You know it?”
    Nick’s face gave nothing away, but his blood chilled. Clara, his girlfriend, worked at The Blue Rose. She’d been working there last night.
    “I know it,” he said quietly. “Have you searched Ramona’s flat?”
    “Of course. We’ve been over it with a fine toothcomb. It’s clean. Find out what you can. I want you to report only to me. We’ll meet at the Fitzroy Tavern on a Friday, when it’s busy, the artists bar downstairs, six tonight. I’ll