‘No. All the men we cried over, and George Dunning was the one sod who had to come home.’ She shifts again, obviously in discomfort.

‘A shame,’ says Harriet, staring at her leg. ‘A shame that you fell down the stairs. I imagine it affects your mobility, your movement.’

‘Bloody hurts, that’s what it does.’

‘You should ask someone to look at it, while you’re here.’

Alice grunts. ‘And what are you here for, miss whoever-you-are? Apart from worrying about my hip. You ain’t Church, I know that. You haven’t started spouting about Jesus yet.’

Alice Dunning is a square-jawed girl not much older than herself. Twenty-four or twenty-five, perhaps. She has a frizz of mid-brown hair around her face, cut in no particular style. Her eyes have dark grey moons underneath them and her skin is unwashed, the colour of watery milk. She clearly hasn’t had much sleep for a while, and it isn’t prison that has wearied her. She steals, Harriet hears Jimmy’s voice in her head, because she needs the money.

Her nose is an odd shape. Michael had said it was broken. In a fight, perhaps. Harriet thinks of little Cecily Enderby, entirely innocent, shoved to the ground by another woman like this one – another woman as used to giving out violence as to being on the receiving end of it. She sits up straighter. She will most definitely not be ‘foxed’.

‘Information.’

‘What information?’

‘About the Forty Thieves. I’m a reporter, at a newspaper. I should like to know about the Forty Thieves – who they are, where they live, how they operate.’

A sneer forms on Alice’s lips. ‘Well, aren’t you a clever girl, getting past the warders?’ She folds her arms. ‘I have nothing to say about the Forty Thieves. I don’t know them.’

Harriet finds the ten-shilling note that is carefully secreted between the leaves of her notebook and lays it on the brown blanket, before smiling brightly at the young woman on the bed, who is now watching her with wary eyes. ‘I’m prepared to pay, and I’ll be very discreet. No one will know you’ve said anything.’

Alice runs a tongue around her gums and considers the note. It wouldn’t hurt to have money in a place like this. Could be useful.

‘The whole of Holloway knows you’re here,’ she says. ‘One word about the Forties appears in the newspapers and I’m dead.’

Harriet puts the pencil tip to the paper and does not look up. ‘The whole of Holloway thinks I’m praying for your soul and urging you to repent of your sins.’

Alice touches the edge of the note gently, considering it. She draws it towards her.

‘What do you want to know?’

16

16

Tuesday evening