“How did you know where I was?”
“I went through your pockets.” Jonah gave him a blinding smile, and Ben laughed, first because he didn’t believe it, and then because Jonah was laughing back at him, and the joy bubbled up like a spring.
After that it was easy. Everything was easy with Jonah.
“I’ve taken a cottage,” he said, naming a little side street off Cross Oak Road. “Very quiet. Two bedrooms. I need a friend to share the costs.” It was as simple as that. Ben told his landlady he’d be sharing his friend’s expenses, and put his few possessions in a cart, and they were there, together.
Chapter Two
Now
Ben spent a week learning London’s meeting-places for men’s men. He had no idea if Jonah would frequent these places, if he would prefer the glittering lights of the Alhambra and the Criterion bar, or the smaller, discreet private houses. He was sure Jonah wasn’t paying for company. He would be on the trolling grounds of Hyde Park or Piccadilly, meeting or being met, and he would know the sort of place where two fellows could take a room with no questions asked.
All that assuming he was here, and that he hadn’t taken another lover, found himself another victim.
Grimly, without pleasure, Ben made himself acquainted with the ways of London’s underworld. He began to recognise faces, and attracted some attention himself. It seemed ludicrous: he knew he was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that a man like Jonah would have looked at twice without an ulterior motive. But evidently something in the line of his mouth and the set of his shoulders made him seem the sort of man who hurt people, and there were men who liked to be hurt. He let a well-dressed dandy suck him in the shadows of Hyde Park one night, and pulled the man’s hair till tears came to his eyes because that seemed to be what the fellow wanted. It wasn’t what Ben wanted.
“A dark-haired man,” he repeated, whenever he judged it right to ask. “Deep blue eyes. Five foot eight. He laughs, all the time. No, I’m not a copper. I just have to find him.”
Most of the men he asked weren’t helpful. They didn’t know Jonah, or if they did they weren’t inclined to hand him over to someone with so much roiling anger. He found nothing, and after a week the policemen who patrolled the edges of the dark areas started to recognise him.
That was a problem. The new law meant that he could be arrested on suspicion of soliciting, and gaoled for what the police thought he might do. He had vaguely hoped to obtain some sort of documentation, something he could use to prove his purpose in the search, but he had forgotten to ask Janossi for credentials in his shock at what he’d learned. He could go back, he supposed, or even approach the Met, but it seemed like tempting fate.
He asked a couple of men about discreet houses where one could take rooms for the night. That led to several predictable misunderstandings and some ruffled feathers. It didn’t take him anywhere near his quarry.
Nine days after his search began, he saw Jonah in the street.
This was a warm March, but there was still a chill in the air come the evening. Ben was walking up Newman Street as the clocks chimed eight, heading for Cleveland Street. He had been too long in Piccadilly that day, and a policeman had moved towards him. Ben, familiar with the signs of a constable with questions to ask, had ducked into a crowd and made himself scarce, which meant going further afield. He had not wanted to spend any more time in Soho, looking at empty eyes with their febrile glitter of meaningless pleasure in the dark, so he headed up northwards, simply to be somewhere else, and saw him.
The man was several yards ahead, so Ben could only see his back in the crowd, but there was no mistake, no hesitation. Jonah’s graceful stroll was embedded in his memory, and Ben’s lungs constricted at the sight. For an insane moment he wanted to cry a greeting, to call out, to have Jonah turn and smile and leap into his arms. Then he remembered, and it hurt all over again.
He caught up with rapid, quiet strides. Jonah was in no hurry, it seemed. He didn’t look round. Ben wondered what to do—force him into an alley? Accost him in the street? What powers could the man call on?
Jonah crossed the road, turning into Cleveland Street, and headed for Runciman’s. Ben had heard of that one. Another of the endless “discreet establishments”, it offered drink and like-minded company, and a set of upstairs rooms for those taking advantage of their like minds. Like Jonah, the whore, scratching his itch in some filthy brothel without a thought for the lover he’d destroyed. A man jerked sideways, passing him, and Ben realised he’d snarled aloud.