‘What are they doing?’ In a corner, Louisa had noticed that Lord and Lady Redesdale were in an animated discussion with their daughters Nancy and Unity.
‘I gather the girls want to join the rally too, lend their support to Sir O,’ said Luke. ‘I think their Muv and Farve are trying to say no, but you know what it’s like trying to refuse those two something they want.’
Louisa knew only too well. Even so, she felt a pull of disappointment. ‘Does no one want to stay and help me celebrate my marriage?’
Luke raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t be petulant. It doesn’t suit you. And besides, I’m here, thank you very much. I count for at least forty policemen.’
‘Yes, you do. Sorry.’ She knew she was being silly. Guy’s family were still there, and there was plenty of food to get through. She wished she didn’t mind about the Mitfords as much; somehow, she always let her expectations get the better of her and she kicked herself for it.
The only person in the room who had the good manners to look ashamed was Diana. Though still married to Bryan, everyone knew that her lover was Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the BUF and the instigator of the day’s rally. Louisa had heard Diana declare her undying love for him as Sir Oswald told her he felt the same, but that he would never leave his wife. Diana’s usual cream-and-rose complexion had a dark flush, and she kept her gaze away from Louisa as she handed her boys to Nanny Blor, apologising that her own Nanny Higgs was on leave. In the next moment she had fled the pub. Walking quickly through the door after her was a man Louisa didn’t recognise. He wore a grey trench coat and a hat with a wide enough brim to hide his features, and he didn’t give a backwards glance as he hurried out. He carried neither newspaper nor briefcase. Perhaps a plain-clothes detective who had been slower off the mark than the others.
Those bloody Mitfords, she thought, they’ve dictated my day again.
CHAPTER TWO
As a detective sergeant for the CID, Guy no longer wore a uniform, but nor did he usually attend to police duty in a suit with a white carnation in his buttonhole. He thought about removing it, then decided that he wasn’t going to let his work interfere any further in his wedding. Louisa had packed up the room she’d been renting a few doors down, and Guy was determined to carry his bride over the threshold of their bedroom that night. What’s more, he’d do it in his best suit with the flower in its rightful place.
All the policemen had been warned and therefore already knew that they were to report directly to their superiors at a meeting place by St Martin-in-the-Fields. Some of the uniforms jumped on passing buses, others joined taxis hailed by more senior ranks and a few rounded up foursomes to take in their cars. Guy was scooped up by DCI Stiles, who, as per usual, looked more elegant than the groom, with a Savile Row suit and his silver hair slicked back, not a strand out of place.
‘Sorry about this, Sully,’ said Stiles as they clipped along the King’s Road together.
‘Not to worry, sir. Can’t be helped.’
‘Least you’ve got a missus now – there’ll be dinner on the table when you get home.’
Guy gave a polite laugh. He didn’t like to point out that as he’d never left home, there had never been a night when dinner hadn’t been on the table. His mother insisted on the importance of ‘something hot’ even though he was now thirty-two and was the last of his brothers, by a long chalk, reliant on her maternal care. Tonight, though, Louisa would prepare his dinner. He didn’t even know if she could cook, but he knew he’d eat it all up, even if it was boiled tripe, and tell her it was delicious. He was determined to be a good husband. Even if he had failed at the first hurdle: absent from his own wedding party.
Guy shook it off and concentrated on the matter in hand. ‘What’s the form, sir?’
Stiles stopped at a black Daimler, the standard-issue motor car for senior officers, but this one had a pale pink cushion on the driver’s seat. Stiles saw Guy look at it.
‘I get a stiff back,’ he explained.
They got in and two uniforms who had been walking close behind got in the rear seats.
‘Indicate right, would you?’ Stiles asked, and the policeman sitting behind him rolled down the window and stuck his arm through. Stiles pulled the car out and, when they were purring along, filled them in on the afternoon’s event.
‘As you know, we got word a few days ago that Sir O was planning this rally. It’s the first of its kind and we don’t properly know what to expect, but if we’ve all been called in, then I’d say the numbers are bigger than anyone thought.’
‘What sort of numbers?’ asked Guy.
‘Anything over five thousand, I’d say. We were prepared, but for less than that. There are uniforms out there and a few plain clothes keeping an eye out for any irregular activities on the side. This is worrying. I don’t like the idea of that many people thinking the BUF has got something to offer them.’
‘Sounds all right to me, if you ask, guv,’ said the man who’d pulled his arm back in again. ‘Macdonald’s a shower, isn’t he? A traitor to the Labour party. We need a real leader, someone who believes in the Brits and the working man.’
Stiles looked at the man severely in his rear-view mirror. ‘I wasn’t asking you, Kershaw.’ He looked at the road ahead and braked in time to let a young woman holding a small child cross the road. ‘You boys in the back, report in at the church and you’ll be told where to go. Sully, I want you to get to the back of the crowd. Watch out for anything suspicious. Anyone taking advantage of the crowd situation, whether it’s pickpocketing or starting a fight.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘We need to know who these people are.’
‘Yes sir,’ said Guy automatically. Then: ‘Why, sir?’
Stiles gave a sigh. ‘A politician might give you a different answer, but I think they’re troublemakers. Bored young men, most of them, sorry they missed out on the war.’ He gave Guy a sideways look. ‘They shouldn’t be. They were the lucky ones.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Guy coughed. The shame of not fighting had never left him, even if it had hardly been his fault. He’d been disallowed on the grounds of his extreme short-sightedness. But where he had been lucky, his brothers were each called up and one of them never came home.
Guy looked outside as they drove along Pall Mall, in the shadow of the great cream slabs that housed gentlemen’s clubs, men snoozing in armchairs, egg stains on their ties, blissfully unaware of the vast numbers of police swarming into this corner of London. The weather was dry, bright, a little chilly – a perfect day for his wedding, he had thought that morning. Perfect, too, for anyone who had an idea of turning out to a public gathering. Rain was enough to dampen the political ardour of most, but there was none today. Yet the streets looked quiet, bar the usual Saturday shoppers and strollers walking between St James’s and the National Gallery, or even dropping down from the seedy streets of Soho. There were policemen hurrying along and Guy saw one or two civilians notice them, saw the alarm on their faces as they wondered why there were this many.
Stiles pulled his car into a dead end after the corner at Haymarket and all four got out quickly, but Guy could feel straightaway that there was no hum of a crowd in the air. There was nothing in the air at all beyond a cold breeze that made his neck feel stiff.