What Breaks A Detective.

Chapter 6

The two men, Smart and Newham, stood stock still in the dark and gloomy props room. They were close to the door, and were quietly deliberating whether they should shut it with them on the inside or the outside.

It seemed Newham decided outside, as he grabbed Smart by the coat collar and dragged him out, pulling the door shut behind them. The two of them set off down the corridor the way they had come.

"You here for the meeting?"

"Yeah" Smart lied instantly, spinning on his heel to address the speaker who had appeared so suddenly behind them, mimicking the man's accent and dialect perfectly. He had always had a knack for accents. Newham had at least the sense to turn around and join in the bluff.

"Don't really know our way round this place" Smart carried on, shoving his hands commonly in his pockets and squinting around at the dingy shadows from under his hat. "Could you maybe show us where to go, man?"

"Right this way."

As the two of them followed the unknown man along the corridor and into the main auditorium of the theatre, Smart could see Newham's head spinning, and that the ex-soldier was looking decidedly jumpy. As they took some seats at the back, Smart slyly winked at his companion, relaxing lazily into the uncomfortable seat in quite the common pose. Newham rolled his eyes unobtrusively and copied.

The auditorium began to fill even more, and Smart did then begin to worry. Slightly. He and Newham were becoming a little like rabbits in a fox den, but experience and practice told him that they'd be fine as long as they pretended they were supposed to be there. Smart only hoped Newham would do the sensible thing and keep his head.

The murmuring of the men around them was cut off as a strange, lopsided clunking came to their ears. Smart lazily tilted his chin up, looking down his nose as he tried to see where it was coming from. A huge, tattered brown coat had made its way in from a side door and was step-clunking its way up to the stage in front of the gathered men. Sucking in his cheeks excitedly, Smart studied the man beneath it for a second before leaning back once more and regarding the whole scene.

The man beneath the coat reminded Smart a bit of a malformed potato. He was scarred badly across all of his face, and Smart had instantly deduced the step-clunk to be because of the wooden right leg the man had, bared proudly to any onlookers with his trouser leg rolled up to his knee.

Other than that, Smart could find no descriptive analogy that didn't imply that the man scared him half to death.

From underneath the ugly bulges of what was left of the flesh on his face, slitty little black eyes glinted occasionally in the light. His lips were thin, giving him the look of a snake, and his nose was half gone, a large chunk out of the left side. He was a heavyset man, but Smart only knew that because he had to be, as his form was cleverly masked by the shapeless clothing he wore, and the Detective Inspector could think of no other reason for the deception other than to deceive any potential attacker. His hair was patchy and like rats' tails-a greasy ginger coming down to the base of his neck, and the roots were beginning to grey, Smart noticed, if he squinted.

He was beginning to regret this-slightly.

The scarred man cleared his throat.

"I don't wanna be here" he began, in a voice grating and tough. "But higher powers instruct that if we are to take on this capital we must be aware of something."

American, Smart thought. Definitely. In fact, the man who had spoken to them before had also spoken like an American. And he had replied. Like an American. Sort of.

Well, in his defense, he'd had one sentence to pick out a suitable tone for a reply.

"There is a young lady-two young ladies, in fact-that have the capability to cause us a hell of a lotta trouble" the gruff speaker carried on. "I mean, one of 'em's the reason why we've been shipped over. Got the whole London unit jailed almost single handedly. Clever girl. In fact, both of them are. Which is why we gotta watch our backs."