Free Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickinson

given the promise that he would come through alive and start on his career. It was terror for Adrian-to-be that filled the well with its cold slow-churning mass, all that glorious future smashed, mown down by a machine-gun-burst trying to cross some bloody ditch. And the way that Mr Trinder had put it had added to the suddenness of the inward ambush, the casual tone, the argument not from solid provable daytime facts but ungraspable powers of luck and ill-luck. Mr Trinder stretched again, widening the gesture into a yawn.
    â€œTrouble is,” he said, “I’m missing your mother.”
    â€œSo’m I.”
    â€œNot what I meant. There was I, wandering along under the moon, licking my lips a bit, anticipating, if you get my drift …
    â€œYes, of course. I don’t mind.”
    â€œYou’re a good lad. Point is, if you won’t think it heartless, I’m going to have to go and do something about it.”
    â€œThat’s all right. If you’ll just help me get out of the docks. Toby’ll have gone home by now.”
    They rose together. Mr Trinder shrugged himself into his coat and put his hat on. He laid a pound note on the table—far too much for a couple of mugs of tea—and weighted it with the sugar jar, but still made no move for the door.
    â€œPity you couldn’t’ve kept the old bugger happy with a bit of chat,” he said.
    â€œI could have if I’d wanted, in theory.”
    Mr Trinder shook his head, dead serious.
    â€œMuch better do a bit of the practical. It’s a lot different from how you imagine it.”
    â€œWell …”
    â€œI know a nice house. Girl there just right for a beginner.”
    â€œI don’t suppose I’ve got enough money.”
    â€œThis is on me. Owe it to the family, you might say.”
    â€œAll right. Thank you very much.”
    FOUR
    It had snowed again, rather more than a sprinkling this time, enough to make the search through the rubble of Number 19 an even more hopeless task. Still, there was just a chance, seeing the shelf which held the tea-pot had been on the very back wall of the house. The wall might have bulged out, and the tea-pot would only have been squashed a bit, being pewter, not broken. Andrew calculated the position and eased out a couple of bricks, inspecting their sides for the yellow kitchen distemper. No luck. He tried again, further right.
    There’d been a bobby watching at the front, to keep scavengers off, but Andrew had walked straight past him and round through the back alley between the coal-sheds and the old outside toilets. The mound of rubble hid him from the street. He worked patiently, barely noticing how his fingers numbed and blundered. He was thinking about last night.
    The girl had been called Minnie. A darkie, much blacker than Samuel Mkele, he thought, though it had been hard to be sure in the dim and smoky light. She wasn’t at all pretty and reeked of sweat and cheap scent, but she’d giggled and squirmed and given every impression of liking what he did, and when it was over she’d said in broken English that he was very nice, very strong, very good. That was part of her job, Andrew guessed, but he’d also known in his bones it was true. From his side the experience had been thrilling, not because of physical enjoyment, which had been there all right, but something more important to him. It had been a parallel event to the scene earlier last night when the Dame had told the story about the siren and the sailors. He had been aware of this even at the time, and more and more so as he looked back. There was the same sense of mastery, of mysterious energies focusing into a moment, of the other partner (the audience, the black girl) being made by those energies to melt, to become so malleable that they answered to a whisper, to a touch—and also, with all that, with the pleasure and excitement, the dominant will detached and watching, chilly,