*

Night had fallen across London, bringing with it fresh falls of snow. The long barrel of Cable Street was criss-crossed by the footprints of tradesmen and drunks on their way home. A lone fox darted between the upturned rubbish pails, its eyes aglow.

The knock came at midnight. Alma Cohen was the first to hear it. She turned over in the bed she’d once shared with her husband Stanley, and some instinct still made her reach out for him. A knock in the middle of the night only meant one thing. Bad news. She kept an old skillet at the side of her bed for nights like these.

She was coming through the bedroom door when she crashed into her son Artie walking along the hall. ‘I’ll see to this, Ma,’ he said. ‘You get your beauty sleep. It’s cold enough to freeze your knackers off out there.’

‘Artie!’

‘Sorry, Ma, but you’ve heard worse. Look, I’ll deal with this. I’m the man of this house, ain’t I?’

‘You’re not in trouble again, are you, Artie?’

If only I was, thought Artie as he tramped down the stairs. Then I might be making us Cohens some money . . .

Downstairs, the knocking grew in intensity. Artie braced himself, ready to deal somebody a fist of his own for having the temerity to wake his mother in the middle of the night, and opened the door.

His brother stood there, in the swirling snow of the night.

‘You,’ Artie growled.

Ray Cohen held up his hands. ‘I’m not here to fight with you, Artie. I’m here to give you what you want. I can’t dance for them any more. I can’t stand up and dance for everything that’s wrong in the world. I want to . . . what would Dad have called it? Even the scales? Redress the balance?’ Ray paused, a fringe of white forming on his wild black hair. ‘Get your overcoat, Artie. This night’s as good as any.’

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-seven

THE TWO FIGURES WHO TRAMPED through the snow of Berkeley Square were careful to stick to the shadows at the edges of the townhouses, half-cloaked by the black iron railings and tall privet hedges of the Mayfair elite. In the shadow of the Buckingham, its ornate copper crown now capped in white, they stopped and gazed up.

Raymond urged Artie up the square and down the narrow alley of Michaelmas Mews. The cobbles here were glazed in yet more white, the railings turned to spears of ice on either side. Artie’s blood was getting up – but this was one enterprise in which Artie, no matter how talented he was in the subtle arts of breaking and entering, could not take charge.