She could see faces in the crowd, looking nervously at one another. Some of the dancers were already crowding the doorway, making haste to get out of the Midnight Rooms altogether. The band remained on the stage, with nowhere else to go – but, as the thug’s brothers arrived, the bandleader – a black man with thick coils of hair and an immaculate beard – stepped out in front of his upright piano and ceremoniously removed his smart silk jacket. ‘Not here!’ he cried out. ‘Not in the Midnight Rooms. This is a good place. This is for music. This is for dance!’

The first blows landed. The bandleader vaulted down to join the fray. Soon the rest of the band had ditched their instruments to fight at his side. Seeing what was happening, some of the remaining dancers in the room were emboldened. They charged back to the dance floor – and Raymond was lost behind the new press of bodies.

Nancy felt Billy grappling with her arm. ‘Nance,’ he said, ‘we got to go.’

‘But Billy! It’s Raymond. What if he—’

‘We can’t be here, Nance. We can’t help him.’

‘They weren’t speaking sense,’ Nancy gasped. ‘They called him Cohen. His name’s de Guise. Billy, they got the wrong man!’

Billy wrenched her around. ‘I said I’d get you here safe, and I’ll get you out of here safe as well. We’ve got to get back . . .’

Through the madness of bodies grappling with each other, Nancy caught another glimpse of Raymond lying prostrate on the floor.

As the crowd closed back around him, she saw him mouth one final word.

‘Run!’

It was the final encouragement Nancy Nettleton needed. As the fight erupted behind her, she raced after Billy Brogan, back to the barren street market and the moonlit Soho streets above.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT, BERKELEY SQUARE was becalmed. Billy brought Nancy within sight of the hotel’s lights and there they said their goodbyes. ‘But I’m going to need my coat, Nance. I got to get back to Lambeth and the cold’s setting in.’

Billy was helping her out of it when he caught her look. ‘Nance, are you—’

Nancy cut him off, ‘Was he . . . dead, Billy? Did they . . . ?’

Billy took her by the shoulders. ‘Not dead, Nance. Louis Kildare got him out of there. You can stake your last shilling on it.’

The cold of this September night was more bitter than Nancy remembered. A wind curled across Berkeley Square and chilled her to the core.

‘But who were they?’ she whispered. ‘He’s mixed up in something, isn’t he, Billy? Something bad.’

‘You can’t think of it, Nance.’

‘But he’s one of us!’ She stopped dead. What did I mean by that? ‘I mean to say . . . one of the Buckingham. He’s one of ours, Billy, and they—’