Free The Advocate's Wife by Norman Russell Page A

spice to the day. He had noticed a hulking giant of a fellow glancing in his direction as he had skirted St Paul’s Churchyard, and his professional instincts had been alerted to possibledanger. He’d wondered whether one of Gideon Raikes’s thugs had been put on his tail.
    And now, the hulking man was there again, trailing a hundred yards behind him. Box felt the reassuring length of the truncheon in the special pocket tailored into his left trouser leg. Villains sometimes didn’t realize that plain-clothes policemen carried a concealed weapon –a crocus-wood truncheon, twelve inches long, with a nice leather thong at the handle….
    Box began to walk more briskly through the now dense fog, and turned abruptly right into a narrow lane a few yards before the opening to Garlick Hill.
    Away from the main thoroughfares, London had become a world of shadows. A church tower loomed up to his left. He entered a narrow lane, where tall, shuttered, houses stared blankly at each other across the wet cobbles. Very soon, he would emerge on to the complex of warehouses and jetties known as Syria Wharf. And there, in a long, attic office which looked like something out of the Arabian Nights, he would find Mr Anton Berg, a man well versed in the mysteries of silk and satin, and in the subtle arts of the dressmaker. Anton Berg could read garments like other people read books….
    ‘Help!’ It was a shrill cry, anguished and hopeless, and it was followed by a shattering of glass. The sounds came from an alley so narrow that Box’s shoulders touched its sides as he ran down it towards what he recognized as the classical sounds of brutish robbery with violence. To seize and apprehend malefactors was his vocation. He moved as swiftly now as he had done in his days as a uniformed constable. He eased the truncheon from its concealed pocket.
    The alley opened out into a tiny square, and through the swirling mist Box saw the bow window of a shop, approached by a tall flight of steps between black iron railings. Painted above the window was the legend: DAMIAN SHULBREDE. WATCHMAKER.
    All thoughts of Anton Berg forgotten, Inspector Box burst into the shop. The door, fitted with a patent spring, slammed shut behind him. Yes; there was the smashed display case, the glint of jewellery, the terrified ashen-faced old man standing as though paralysed against the wall. There were two robbers, one big andbrutal, the other lithe and snarling – river-vermin, who had crawled up here from the slime of King’s Reach under cover of the fog.
    At times like this, you didn’t think about the most prudent course of action: you launched yourself at the foe. Box caught the lithe, snarling man by surprise, flinging him, spitting and cursing, to the floor, and stunning him with a blow from his truncheon. A second later he was lifted bodily by the big brute, and thrown violently against the wall. The robber closed in for the kill, and Box saw his rigidly expressionless face, and his dead, emotionless eyes. This was the type who would kill as well as plunder.
    With a report like a sudden gunshot, the front door was kicked open, and the hulking brute who had been following Box from St Paul’s Churchyard charged into the shop. With a roar of rage he hurled himself at the big robber, who lost his balance and fell to the floor with a sickening crash. He was up in a moment, bellowing with fury, but was immediately felled by his massive assailant. The dazed eyes were briefly enlivened by a dawning look of surprise before the man collapsed backwards on the floor, unconscious.
    ‘Well done—’ Box began, but his rescuer gave him no time to finish.
    ‘That’s enough of that, my lad! Put your hands above your head, and keep them there! Up! Up!’
    Box did as he was told. He was fascinated by this gigantic man. Who was he? Who’d sent him? He wasn’t one of Percy’s lot … An ugly-looking brute! Taller even than Kenwright, with close-cropped yellow hair, and a livid