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This time of year, it got dark early, but today it was even darker with a storm brewing and the sky full of black clouds. Some of the houses had their lights on, and she welcomed the glow that spilled onto the pavement.

Someone shuffled toward her from up ahead, and she caught the faint sound of humming. She smiled as she recognized the tune.

A popular song from the war.

“We do meet again, Jerry,” she called when the figure had almost reached her. She noticed he had a little dog on a leash with him.

“Eh?” Jerry stopped and then let out a chuckle. “That’s a good one, Gabriella.”

“Are you here for the stuff someone’s put out on the pavement?” she asked, because this was a little out of the way for him.

“No, I’m cutting through to the high street to buy something, and walking Scotty here, but if there’s things been put out, I’ll give them a look. Anything good?”

“It was hard to see exactly what was there in this gloom,” she said, bending down to give Scotty, who was unsurprisingly a Scottish Terrier, a scratch between the ears. “It’s on the other side of the road but they’re renovating by the looks of things, and it was a fairly large pile.”

“Ooh.” He rubbed his hands together in glee. He was dressed in a number of layers, but they all looked relatively clean, which was probably Ruby Everett’s doing, and he had on some fingerless mittens. “I’ll have a poke through. Ta very much for letting me know.”

She waved goodbye as he crossed the road, and carried on her way.

Ruby had told her she’d arranged for Jerry to live in the back of a block of flats, in a tiny room that had probably once been used for storage. He swept the outside of the building and raked the leaves in the tiny garden at the back in exchange for free rent.

Ruby said some of the residents paid him to wash their cars for them, and a few had started asking him to feed their pets if they went away, so he was earning a little bit of money.

She guessed if he found anything he liked in the giveaway pile outside the house, he’d go find his friend Teddy Roe to come help him carry any treasures back to his new home.

His situation put her own irritation with the condition of her flat into perspective, but then again, she was actually paying rent, and her landlord was not really providing any upkeep in exchange.

She decided to talk to Solomon about it when she next saw him. He didn’t live in her building, but he paid the rent on his uncle’s flat there, and she’d never known him to be anyone’s doormat.

Plan made, she turned left and started down Shepherd’s Bush Green, and was pleased to see there weren’t a lot of cars, and almost no expired meters.

When she finally came back down the street with the house under renovation, she saw that someone had knocked over the pile of furniture. It looked as if they’d dislodged the top items, perhaps to get at something underneath, and then hadn’t put it back.

She didn’t think it would have been Jerry who did it, though. She’d never seen him be anything less than respectful and it was nearly two hours since she’d run into him.

The wind had been promising rain for the last half hour, and it almost hurt to breathe in the cold air, but she couldn’t leave the pavement looking like this. It was a danger to pedestrians, so she started setting things back to rights.

“Eh. What’re you—?” The man who materialized out of the darkness on the other side of the low wall nearly gave her a heart attack with his shout—particularly the edge to it—but she reckoned, when he caught sight of her uniform, she gave him one right back.

She straightened. “Yes?”

“Sorry, officer.” His tone was stiff. “Someone knocked the furniture over and I thought you were someone else rummaging through it.”

“Well, if you don’t want people to rummage through it, you should leave it in the skip,” she said. “But you also have to make sure it isn’t blocking the way if you leave it out for people to help themselves.”

“No, of course. I’ll move it to the skip now. Sorry for the trouble.”

Gabriella stepped back. She should be thrilled to not have to bother with this, but the way he was trying to get rid of her rubbed her up the wrong way.

She hadn’t corrected his mistake that she was an officer, but she was glad he thought she was, because it had stopped him dead.

“Have a good evening, then.” She nodded and walked away, and felt his eyes on her back until she guessed he couldn’t see her anymore.

She glanced behind her when she was a good distance away, but it was too dark to make out anything, and then the rain began coming down, and she pulled up her umbrella and ran for headquarters.

Badly maintained or not, it would be good to get home tonight.

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