Chapter 2: Air Raid Precautions - London, March 1941

It was dark and cold. The whine of the air raid siren sounding the "all clear" cut through the night, blotting out the hissing and crackling sound from the fires that raged a block or so from where Clegg was standing. "Inconvenient," he thought, "I wasn't quite finished." It wasn't too much of a problem though; it would be a while before folk emerged from the shelters.

As if to add to his difficulties, the wall of a nearby building collapsed with a crumbling crash, spewing a jet of dust across the roadway beside him. He scowled at the rubble, brushing himself down as he did so.

Freddie Clegg had found the blitz a lot less of an imposition than most of his fellow Londoners. While many of them were spending uncomfortable nights in the Underground or in makeshift shelters of their own, Clegg was hard at work. The raids were coming almost every night now. Two hundred bombers at a time or more they said. He'd watched them fly over many times - Heinkels with their soft rounded wings; Junkers, engines throbbing with a characteristic beat; Dorniers, slim as pencils and fragile looking but still capable of delivering a powerful load of incendiaries and high explosive. Anti-aircraft fire didn't seem effective and he'd seen nothing of the promised night fighter successes. Occasionally a bomber would be coned in the brilliant shafts of a pair of search lights and the concentration of fire would bring it down. But there still seemed plenty more to come the next night, and the next.

Clegg didn't mind, though - so many of his enterprises benefited from the black out. The police were busily occupied with coping with the effects of the raids. The streets were deserted; broken buildings left dark corners. As long as you took no notice of the falling bombs and the collapsing masonry and stayed away from the spivs and the black marketeers that were making the most of the opportunities for "liberating" bomb damaged property, you had the city to yourself.

An unconscious girl of twenty two or three, the latest focus of Clegg's attentions, was lying propped against a half demolished wall. Her unconscious state might seem to have been the consequences of German military activity. In all honesty, though, Clegg had to confess it was entirely due to the pad of chloroform he had pressed against her face. Her brown tweed coat fell open as Clegg dragged her wrists behind her back so that he could tie them with the length of cord he had pulled from his pocket. She was still wearing her steel helmet with the letters "ARP" on the front but Clegg noted with satisfaction that she'd obviously come straight from the club to take her turn on Air Raid Precautions, watching for fires. Her coat fell open. Clegg could see her cigarette girl's outfit beneath it. The absurdly short skirt gave Clegg an agreeable prospect of her stocking clad legs. He'd seen her a few times at the Windmill. No doubt Mrs Van Damme would be sorry to lose her.

Clegg felt a small pang of guilt as he tightened the cords. It was a shame that her public spiritedness in going out on fire watch should have placed her at risk from the likes of him. But at least the bombers had gone, he thought as he looked skywards for a moment. Her fire watching wouldn't be needed any more tonight.

Clegg considered the girl as she lay limply on the dust and rubble strewn linoleum floor of the bombed out building. He was pleased with his choice. She'd have plenty of chances to make a new contribution to the war effort. After all someone had to keep the Middle East on the Allies' side if they were going to keep hold of essential supplies of oil. London showgirls and hostesses still represented a valuable commodity with those whose influence counted in and around Baghdad. Clegg felt it was almost his patriotic duty to meet the demand.

The girl began to stir. Clegg thought for a moment. Should he gag her first or tie her ankles? She slumped back again, her head lolling limply, a trickle of dust from the wall above coursing down across her forehead. There wasn't much risk of her either running or crying out, Clegg decided. Since he still had cords in his hand he lashed her ankles together, his hands brushing across her nylon covered calves. "It isn't easy," Clegg, thought. "Too much risk of being distracted. People don't appreciate how hard I have to work to keep my mind on what I am doing." Forcing himself to concentrate on his task, he focussed his attention on the cords and the knots, threading the cords between her feet and ankles to cinch them tightly together. He pulled the girls own scarf from her neck, knotted it in the middle, pushed the knot between the girls lips and then tied the scarf in place as a gag. By now the girl was stirring again, this time with more effect. Realising her situation she groaned into her gag and struggled against the cords that held her arms and legs. Clegg bent down beside her. In what was intended to be a reassuring gesture, he reached forward to brush away a strand of hair from the girl's face. She, fearing a slap or worse, tried to pull away from him, taking no comfort from his look of concern.