Nameless Read Free

beds.
    But this morning there was the scent of fire in the air, the smell of destruction. A pall of smoke lingered in the streets, mingling with threads of London smog. Ruby hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after last night’s raid; she’d lain awake listening to the fire engines racing around, imagining people blown apart, crushed, killed. The Darkes had survived, but some had not been so fortunate.
    As they crossed the road to the corner shop, they could see all the way down to Brooke Road.
    ‘Oh God,’ said Ruby, staring.
    Smack!
    Ruby recoiled. Ted had cuffed her hard around the ear.
    ‘You don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,’ he snarled.
    ‘Sorry, Dad, sorry,’ she said, her head ringing from the force of the blow.
    But her eyes were fastened on the scene down there. There were still-smouldering fires from the incendiary bombs. There was a crater where once a house had been. Rubble was piled up – chairs, fragments of beds, bricks with scraps of gaily coloured wallpaper still clinging on, drawers, broken bookshelves.
    People were picking over the remains. An ambulance driver wearing a tin hat with a white-painted A on the front was pulling something out of a tangle of cables and dirt. It was a young woman’s body, mangled and bloodstained. Two watching women, older women, set up a wailing and shrieking as they saw the body emerge.
    ‘What the—’ said her father suddenly.
    Ruby jumped, flinching. She froze to the pavement. What had she done?
    But her father wasn’t raising his fist. He was running forward with his faltering gait, heading for the shop.
    Ruby’s heart was thwacking hard against her chest wall. For an instant, she’d been not only sick to see such horrors, but terrified. Anything made her jump, she was such a coward. A loud noise. The bombs falling. A dog barking, a sudden movement, a sudden sound. Anything.
    Dad was limping full speed to the door of the shop and now she ran after him. The door was hanging open. She could see the wood had splintered away from the lock. Ted Darke fell inside and so did Ruby. He stopped dead in the centre of his small empire, and Ruby only just managed to avoid cannoning into his back and getting another thick ear for her trouble.
    Ted was staring around. Sacks of flour had been kicked all over the floor. All the containers and bags of loose tea were gone. The two precious hams, which had hung so enticingly at the back of the shop above the till, were missing. So was the till itself. Piles of eggs had been upturned and smashed, making a sticky mess all over the floor. Most of the stock had been taken, but some of it had just been vandalized.
    On the far wall someone had smeared in black paint: SHOULD HAVE PAID UP.
    ‘What . . . ?’ Ruby stared at the message. She looked at her father. ‘What does that mean – Should have paid up ? What for? Who to?’
    Ted was breathing hard, red-faced. He turned, nearly knocking her flat as he went back outside the shop. Bill Harris, the insurance clerk who rented the flat over the shop from Ted, was coming out of the side door on his way to work. Ted caught his arm.
    ‘D’you know anything about this?’ he demanded.
    Bill looked first annoyed and then scared. Ted was a big man, intimidating despite his disability. He looked furious, as if about to inflict damage. The little clerk’s eyes flickered to the smashed door, the wrecked interior.
    ‘No, Mr Darke. Not a thing.’
    But he must have heard something, thought Ruby. She looked back at the wreckage of her father’s shop. No one could do this much damage and not make a noise.
    Ted released the man with a flick of the wrist. ‘Is that so?’ he asked, his mouth twisted in a sneer.
    ‘Yes. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .’The man hurried away.
    ‘Don’t want to get involved,’ grunted Ted. ‘Little fucker .’
    ‘What does that mean, Dad?’ asked Ruby. ‘What they wrote on the wall? Paid up what? To who?’
    ‘Will you shut up for a minute?’