Read Chapter 23: The Leak

The radiator in the Soho hideout ticked like a time bomb. Eddie lay propped against the wall, a sheen of fever sweat on his forehead, watching Arthur lay out the photographs across the threadbare carpet. Eight-by-ten glossies, each one a bead on a string that led straight to Victor’s neck.

“You’ve got enough here to hang him twice,” Eddie said, voice a dry rasp. “Bribery. Extortion. That warehouse receipt with his signature. And the shot of him leaving the Albion with Marlow—that ties them both.”

Arthur didn’t look up. He was sorting the prints by weight of damage, choosing the four that would hit hardest. “Hanging’s not what I want. I want him running scared. I want him making mistakes.”

“Then why a tabloid? Go to the police.”

Arthur’s jaw tightened. “Your lot already had a chance. Someone inside the force feeds Victor information. I put this in official hands and it comes back to me as a bullet in the dark.” He tapped the smallest photograph—Victor’s face caught mid-laugh outside the Albion, Marlow’s hand on his shoulder. “But a journalist with a circulation problem? That man will print anything that sells. And Victor can’t pull strings at a newspaper he doesn’t know exists yet.”

Eddie let out a low, wet laugh. “You’ve got a nasty streak, Phelps. I like it.”

Arthur found the name he was looking for in his father’s address book—a marginal note in spidery handwriting: *D. Coyle, Daily Mirror, after 6pm at the Crown & Anchor. Bearer of this book is a friend.*

His father had known everyone worth knowing in Soho, and a few worth avoiding. Arthur pocketed the address book, slid the four photographs into a manila envelope, and stood.

“I need you to stay here. Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone.”

Eddie’s eyes flicked to the fire escape. “And if someone comes through that window?”

Arthur pulled the curtain across, plunging the room into faint amber gloom. “Then you’re dead anyway. Nothing I can do from Fleet Street.”

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The Crown & Anchor stank of stale ale and cheaper ambitions. Arthur found Dennis Coyle in a corner booth, nursing a Scotch he’d clearly been nursing for hours. The man was fifty, bloated, with ink-stained fingers and the vigilance of a terrier that had been kicked one time too many.

Arthur slid into the seat opposite and placed the envelope on the table, face down.

Coyle looked at him with half-lidded suspicion. “You selling something or buying?”

“Selling. For nothing.”

“Nothing’s the most expensive thing there is.”

Arthur turned the envelope over and slid out the top photograph—Victor’s face, unmistakable, mid-handshake with a harbour master whose name had been in the papers during the dockyard corruption inquiry. Coyle’s eyes narrowed. He reached for it.

Arthur pulled it back. “My name doesn’t appear anywhere. You got this from a source who wishes to remain anonymous. You print that and the trail ends with me dead in a ditch, I’ll haunt your sorry arse till the day you die—and I’ll make sure your editors know exactly who leaked your off-the-record affair with the barmaid.”

Coyle’s mouth twitched. Not fear—respect. “You do your homework.”

“I do other people’s homework. That’s how I stay alive.”

Arthur pushed the envelope across. Coyle flipped through the photographs, his expression shifting from professional interest to genuine hunger. This was front-page material. This was a career-saving scoop for a man whose star had been waning since the Profumo affair dried up his sources.

“Where’d you get this?” Coyle asked.

“North Quay. You’ll find corroborating paperwork in the harbour master’s office if you move before he burns it.”

Coyle looked at Arthur for a long moment. Then he nodded, tucked the envelope inside his coat, and stood. “If this is a stitch-up, I’ll find you.”

“If it’s a stitch-up, I’ll already be dead. You’ll have to haunt me instead.”

Coyle left without another word. Arthur stayed in the booth, nursing the dregs of a pint he hadn’t ordered, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It always did.

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The morning edition hit the stands at six. By seven, the phones were ringing across London—Arthur heard it himself through a cafe radio, the clipped BBC voice reading the lead story with badly feigned neutrality: *“Police have declined to comment on allegations linking a prominent transport figure to organised crime. The photographs, which appear in today’s Mirror, have been described by Scotland Yard as—‘part of an ongoing inquiry.’”*

Arthur drained his tea and left a coin on the saucer.

By noon, Victor had gone to ground. Arthur confirmed it through a network of small favours—a newsagent in Camden, a betting shop clerk, a barmaid who owed him from a long-ago wager paid off. Victor’s usual haunts were empty. His car had been spotted leaving his Mayfair flat at six-fifteen that morning, tailed by a black Wolseley that no one could identify. The men who worked for him were scattering like roaches.

But roaches don’t run far. They regroup. And they bite.

Arthur felt it first in the strange quiet of the afternoon. The city felt watchful. Twice he doubled back on his own route, and twice he saw nothing. But he knew better than to trust sweat alone.

The third sign came as he turned onto Greek Street, heading toward a boarding house he’d used once before. A chalk mark on the brickwork—three strokes, horizontal, the sign the pickpockets used to mean *“mark is known, watch your back.”* Except Arthur had never been a pickpocket.

He turned and walked the other way, cutting through an alley behind the old Turkish baths. His heart was accelerating into a rhythm he hadn’t felt since the warehouse.

Victor had moved fast.

The bounty was out. He’d have put it on the street not in cash, but in favors—anyone who brought Arthur’s head would be owed. And in this city, favors were worth more than pounds.

Arthur made it to the boarding house on Shaftesbury Avenue just as dusk bled into lamplight. The landlady, Mrs. Dobbs, took his money without asking questions—he’d been smart enough to use a fictitious name last time. She showed him to a room on the third floor with a window overlooking the fire escape and a lock that would hold against anything short of a battering ram.

He sat on the edge of the bed, coat still on, and ran through what he knew.

Victor had resources. Victor had a patron—the Baron. And Victor now had a reason to burn every bridge he’d built to find Arthur. A man with nothing to lose was the most dangerous animal in the city.

Arthur reached into his coat and pulled out the diary—Eddie’s diary, the one that had saved his life. The binding was worn, the stitches loose. He felt along the spine with his thumb until he found the give, the slight thickness where something had been sewn into the cloth.

He’d need a knife. A quiet afternoon. And a place where Victor’s men couldn’t find him for more than a few hours at a time.

He couldn’t go back to the Soho hideout—too obvious now, and Eddie was too weak to fend off anyone who came looking. Mrs. Dobbs would keep him for a night, maybe two, but he needed to keep moving.

He stood, crossed to the window, and eased it open. The fire escape clattered softly in the wind. Below, the street was empty—for now.

But as he watched, a figure appeared at the far corner. Same silhouette he’d seen trailing him through Soho days ago. The man in the grey coat—still there, still watching, patient as a gravestone.

Arthur closed the curtain and started packing.

He’d have to work from the move. There was no other way now. Victor had declared open season, and Arthur had no intention of being the prize.