Sweet Things Dying - Chapter VII

The ninth instalment returns us to Cole's search for Heather Bloom...

VII

London

December 1887

First light Saturday morning.

Adam Cole followed the next logical step in his enquiries: tracing Heather’s last known movements. He had Mac’s clue of the cabman to start with. Should the driver be located many blanks could be filled in, further lines of enquiry developed. Namely, where had she been driven and whom had she been with?

So while the shadows receded beneath the promise of a sun-filled dawn he started out, scratching at the itch of unanswered questions before he allowed himself breakfast.

To find a particular cabbie in London without the advantage of his license number one had to put the word out amongst the cabmen’s shelters that had, in the recent decade, sprung up throughout the metropolis: green timber-framed huts with pitched roofs, each no longer than a horse-and-cart. The latter was a stipulation of the police, who did not want these establishments occupying more than their fair share of space along the side of the busy roadways.

Cole visited two that morning, first on Tower Hill then, presently, on South Place, near Liverpool Street Station. They were the closest shelters, with South Place being just across Bishopsgate from Spitalfields. Were the cabbie a regular of the East End, he would surely attend one – or both – stops on occasion. Especially in the colder months.

The first shelter had produced no results. The attendant and the two cabbies present took his card guardedly, and despite their promises he wasn’t sure they would help find the answers to his questions.