Free Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Page B

talk to Nancy.’
    ‘I don’t want to!’
    ‘No, I know you don’t, but you’re going to have to!’ Hannah looked over at me with a very straight, no-nonsense expression on her face. ‘If, as you think, this killer is going after the White Feather girls in Nancy’s old group, then she could be in danger. And whatever you might feel about her now . . .’
    ‘I could kill her myself!’
    ‘Whatever you say now,’ said Hannah, shouting above the roar of the Heinkels and Messerschmitts up above, ‘you do love her and . . .’
    A massive explosion from somewhere very, very near cut short Hannah’s words as the blast threw both her and the saucepan in her hand across the room. Stark naked as I was, I jumped out of that bed and ran over to her. The gas was out by this time but I could just make her out as she groaned at the foot of the door leading on to the landing.
    ‘Hannah!’
    For a few seconds she made no further noise. I began to panic.
    ‘Hannah!’
    ‘Christ Almighty, H!’ I heard her say. ‘Bloody . . .’
    Another explosion that was far too close rocked the house again and I heard the sound of something splintering somewhere up above. Either the plaster on the ceiling or the boards up above were under strain from the blast.
    Dot Harris from downstairs called up, ‘Hannah love, you and Mr Hancock all right, are you?’
    I heard Hannah take a deep breath and then she yelled, ‘Yes, Dot, all all right here!’
    ‘Fucking Nazis!’ Dot said, and then I heard what was obviously the sound of her shuffling back into her parlour once again.
    ‘Hannah . . .’
    ‘Well, all I can say, H, is that it’s a good job that old range don’t work properly,’ Hannah said breathlessly. ‘Being covered in cold soup, I can stand. Hot soup . . .’
    ‘Hannah,’ I said as I began to pull her up to her feet, ‘are you hurt?’
    ‘Nah!’ The sleeve of her dressing gown was damp and a bit lumpy too, but that was probably the soup. ‘Blimey, H, are you wearing anything or are you in the buff?’
    ‘I’m, well, I’m, er, I . . .’
    She laughed at my so very obvious embarrassment. Then, still in the pitch blackness, she found my lips and kissed me. So it was that I made love in a raid with a woman covered from head to toe in Heinz vegetable soup. Mad as it seems now, we laughed and joked a lot as we did it then too. Only in the morning, when the thin winter dawn broke over yet more death and destruction in the city, did Hannah and I speak of the White Feather girls again.
    Just as I was leaving her, Hannah said to me, ‘H, if you don’t know who the other girls in the group were, then you have to find that out. Speak to Nancy. Take her to the coppers. Marie Abrahams must be the last to die like this. She must!’
    I knew that.
    There had been nine of them. All under twenty-five and all with a passionate love for ‘our boys’, as they had called them, brave men in uniform. As well as Nancy and the four murdered women, there had been twins, Esme and Rosemary Harper, from Forest Gate, a Margaret Cousins from East Ham and another girl from Canning Town who Nan could only remember as Fernanda.
    ‘Her people was Portuguese,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember what her surname was.’
    It had taken a fair bit of courage for Nan to speak to me first when I’d come home that morning. I was still wild with her, which showed in how I responded now. ‘Well, you’d better try and remember,’ I said. ‘Because all these old mates of yours could be in danger.’
    ‘Frank, we don’t know that it’s because of the white feathers . . .’
    ‘How did you all get together?’ I asked. ‘How did you come to do this, this . . .’
    Nancy, Violet Dickens, Dolly O’Dowd and Nellie Martin had all been to New City Road School together. Although Nan and Nellie had never got on, Nellie had been a good friend of Dolly O’Dowd and of Violet Dickens. Marie Abrahams also came in via Dolly O’Dowd, who met