Chapter Twelve

T he first thing Josef did when he got back to his room was to develop the film he’d used that morning in the morgue. It was already growing dark outside, the early November dusk falling like a curtain, so he didn’t have to worry too much as he took the film from the camera and slid it into the wooden winding box. Once he’d wound it onto the drum, the light-proof apron automatically winding around to protect the film, he reopened the box and slipped the drum into the aluminium tank and poured over the developing fluid, and then the fixer.

Twenty minutes later, the film was washed and hanging up to dry.

While he was waiting, Josef went to his desk to find the photograph of Sykes he’d taken at the clearing station. It was still where he’d left it, in the drawer of his little desk, tucked inside the folded piece of paper with his first draft of the words for the pamphlet. He pulled them both out with a sense of relief. Not that he’d thought Alex would be able to reach the shop ahead of him and search his room, but he knew for sure he wasn’t above theft.

Pulling up his chair, he lit the lamp on his desk and held the photograph under the light. Impossible as it was to believe, there was no doubt that the face in the photograph was the same face he’d seen that morning in the morgue.

No explaining that, unless the man had a twin.

And there, too, was the eerie double exposure around his lifeless body that Alex had described. Except, looking closer, Josef saw that it wasn’t the shadow of Skyes’s face. Hard to say what it was, because it was very blurred. Sykes’s eyes, though, even in the monochrome image had that eerie glaze he’d seen gleaming blue outside the hotel in Pops. In the tube tunnel.

And in the sewer.

A chill ran through him at the memory of that night in the sewer, of the stench and ferocity of the man who had attacked him. If it was a man.

Altered , Alex had said, and it was about the only thing he’d said that Josef believed. The question of who had altered him, how, and for what purpose remained unanswered.

Or, rather, unproven. Because Josef had no doubt in his own mind that this was the work of the government’s war machine.

“Josef?” Mrs. Cohen stood in the doorway to his room, wiping her hands on her apron. She smiled wearily as he turned. “There’s a pot of tea in the parlour, love. And then would you mind helping Moss shut up? He won’t say anything, of course, but his rheumatism’s shocking in this weather.”

Josef slipped the photograph back between the folded paper and into his breast pocket. “Of course,” he said, rising and extinguishing the lamp.

Mrs Cohen was a well-built woman, strong and robust, her hair gathered in a neat old-fashioned bun at the nape of her neck. She had a maternal face, for all that she’d never been blessed with children, and her kindly features gathered into a concerned frown as Josef crossed the room towards her.

“Oh, you do look pale,” she said, reaching up to touch his forehead. “Are you feeling poorly?”

“No,” he assured her, taking her hand and squeezing. “Tired, that’s all. I was…working late last night.”

“You work too much,” she scolded, shepherding him out of the room. “And here I am, asking you to do more.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m here to help,” he said, following her to the little parlour above the shop. “And you feed me for my troubles.”

She chuckled. Mrs Cohen loved to cook. “You need feeding up, Joe. There wasn’t much to you when you went to the front, and there’s even less now.”

That was true, although he didn’t like the reminder. Stupidly, it made him think of Alex’s broad frame and how his own wiry body must have appeared to him that night in Pops. Not that he’d complained, but of course he’d had another agenda, hadn’t he? He’d have fucked Josef whatever he looked like to distract him enough to steal his camera.

Mind you…

He was struck, suddenly, by a memory of the heat in Alex’s eyes that night. Desire that had looked and felt real. If Alex had been acting, he’d missed his calling on the stage. And a man that accomplished at deception would surely have been able to concoct a more plausible story than the cock-and-bull tale he’d told Josef this afternoon.

It was a conundrum.

He found Mr Cohen in the parlour and noticed the swelling around his knuckles and finger joints. They looked red and hot and painful. “There you are,” Mr Cohen said, sounding querulous as Josef came to sit on the footstool next to the fire. “I didn’t think we’d see you today.”

“Moss,” Mrs Cohen scolded mildly from where she was pouring tea from the pot.

Josef only smiled. Mr Cohen was a good man, but pain could make anyone irritable. “I’m sorry I’ve been out so much,” he said, accepting a warm mug of tea from Mrs Cohen. “But I’m here now, and I’ll shut up the shop as soon as I’ve finished my tea. You put your feet up, Mr C.”

Mr Cohen narrowed his eyes at the offer, and the nickname. “I’m not so feeble that I can’t shut my own shop.”

“But you’re rude enough not to accept an offer of help with good grace,” said his wife.

Josef smiled and swallowed a mouthful of tea. No sugar, but who had sugar these days? At least there was milk and the comfort of the hot mug in his hands, the warm fire, and the cosy familiar parlour. Together, they conspired to overwhelm him with a sudden wave of exhaustion. When had he last slept properly? Two nights ago? Yet this weight of exhaustion was more than just the aches of his tired, bruised body and his gritty, sleepless eyes.

Was it possible for a mind to be bruised?

He’d never imagined that the horrors he’d seen in the salient could follow him home to London, that they could be lurking beneath the very streets he walked. Yet Sykes had been in the mortuary this morning, as if fresh off the battlefield, and last night, he’d been attacked by something he couldn’t explain.

Suddenly, it felt too much to bear. Would the whole world be infected by this bloody war? Would it grind on and on until nowhere and no one was safe from the horror?

Alarmingly, he felt his eyes prick with hot tears, his throat closing in despair.

“Josef?” Mr Cohen sounded concerned.

Blinking, he took a sip of tea and forced it past the lump in his throat. No room for despair, no room for panic; he had to fight. And he wouldn’t stop fighting until he’d exposed all the government’s dark secrets. Because, in the end, truth was the only way to end the suffering of millions.

“Think I need an early night,” he said, offering Mr Cohen the best smile he could find. “I’ve been burning the candle at both ends a bit, I’m afraid.”

“You haven’t stopped since you got back from France,” Mr Cohen scolded. “You’ve given yourself no time to recover.”

“There are some things that can’t wait.”

Mr Cohen’s huff said all that was necessary about that.

Josef pushed to his feet, setting down his empty mug and trying not to wince at the ache in his back. “And talking of things that can’t wait, I’m going to start closing up. No—” Mr Cohen was attempting to rise. “—You stay there. I can do it myself, but I’ll bring up the takings so you can do the books.”

A compromise, enough to let Mr Cohen subside. “All right, this once. If you insist.”

His easy surrender suggested that his hands were troubling him today and that he was in no position to be lugging around heavy ironmongery.

After Josef brought the takings up to the parlour, it took him about an hour to haul the goods on display outside back into the shop, and then another half hour to tidy everything away to the Cohens’ exacting standards. By then, the weariness that had overtaken him in the parlour had become a heavy blanket of exhaustion. Even though it was barely six o’clock, all he could think about as he finally locked the shop door was his bed and the oblivion of sleep.

Tomorrow, he’d make prints from the photographs he’d taken in the mortuary and take them, and the photograph of Sykes, to May. She’d have no choice but to believe him then, especially with Alex standing next to the body. No chance she’d think him shellshocked into madness when she saw—

Sepulchral blue eyes.

He saw them through the glass door, staring at him from within the fog.

Josef’s heart crashed into his ribs, fear dispelling his weariness as he jerked away from the door. “Fuck,” he hissed. “ Fuck .”

It wants the photograph. It needs it. And you’re in danger while you have it.

Alex’s voice sounded as loud in his memory as if the man had been standing directly behind him. God, Josef wished he was there, longed for it, but tonight he was alone.

No, not alone.

The Cohens were upstairs, sipping their tea in the cosy parlour. And Josef had brought… something to their door. Something dangerous. That much he knew to be true.

He also knew that he couldn’t let them come to harm. Whatever this was, it was Josef’s business, and he would deal with it.

Pulling one of the iron pokers from the display, he edged closer to the door and peered out. The eyes were gone, but it was still out there. He could feel it, a lurking lingering presence in the fog.

Would it try to get into the shop?

He thought suddenly of the back door, rarely locked, and sprinted, poker in hand out the back of the shop, past the stairs and down the short hallway. The door was closed, and he rammed the bolt across with hands that shook.

“Josef?” Mrs Cohen appeared at the top of the stairs. “Whatever’s going on?”

Back to the door, poker in hand, Josef was aware of the sight he must present. He thought quickly. “Ah, a couple of troublemakers outside.”

Her face tensed. They didn’t get a lot of trouble in this part of London, but occasionally, and especially after the recent Zeppelin raids, a few yobs would take Jewish names for German ones and come looking for trouble. Before Josef had gone to the front, back at the start of the war, someone had put a brick through the shop window.

“Don’t worry,” he told Mrs Cohen, trying to sound less terrified than he felt. “Nobody’s getting past me. Go back into the parlour. I’ll keep an eye out at the front, make sure they’ve gone.”

Returning to the shop, he extinguished the lights and peered out through the dark glass of the window. Nothing looked back at him, but a crawling unease shifted beneath his skin. A watching, waiting sensation. Briefly, he considered making a run for it with the photo, leading the creature away from the shop and the Cohens. But where would he go? The Clarion’s offices would be shut by now, and he could think of nowhere else.

Besides, the idea of going out alone into that dismal fog, knowing what lurked within it… He couldn’t do it. The prospect turned his guts and knees watery.

No, better to wait for morning. Then he’d take all the photographs to the Clarion . They’d be safer there than here. Safer for the Cohens to have them gone.

Meanwhile, Josef tightened his grip on the poker and prepared for a long and anxious night.