Chapter One

Dead flesh hung on cruel, steel hooks all around. The metallic scent of bone, muscle and tendon, an icy, nostril-lining smell, hovered here all day, every day. There was no getting away from it.

But I didn’t hate the aroma of death. To me, it represented life.

I picked up my cleaver and held it against the dense skin of a pork loin. Before I started chopping, I peered between two beef carcasses hanging at the end of our stall. It was early morning but Smithfield Meat Market was buzzing with activity—raucous bartering and handshakes securing deals, crates of product being rattled around on ancient carts, and the constant beep beep of vans reversing on the street outside.

My breath hung in front of my face as I set about my task. Twice I caught my chain-mail glove with the cleaver and silently thanked my father for insisting I wore it. He didn’t want me to lose any of my “pretty fingers” or spill my “precious blood” he’d said when he’d given it to me for my twenty-first birthday five years ago.

The trouble was I couldn’t concentrate. Denny had been missing for three weeks now. One minute he was there, in the stall opposite mine, skinning rabbits with a speed that made me dizzy, and then he was gone.

Vanished.

What made it worse was no one seemed to care. Denny was an only child and his elderly parents had passed away a few years ago. As far as I knew he had no other family. His boss, Tony, was a Northern prick. He shrugged when Denny didn’t show two days in a row and then found a replacement in the form of Sean, who was even more of a prick than Tony.

Sean kept smirking at me, his gold front teeth flashing as he raised his eyebrows suggestively. If he thought I’d go out with him he had another think coming. I might be a butcher-girl but I had standards, and dating a guy with a cobweb tattoo on his neck was a definite no-no.

I set my cleaver down and went about stacking the loins into a transportation box. They were going to an exclusive butcher-shop in Knightsbridge, the owner a long-standing customer and highly regarded by Her Royal Highness.

Mid-chop my attention was harnessed by a loud Cockney voice bellowing nearby. The rough sound penetrated the throng of buyers and over the makeshift partition between our stall and the next.

“Duke of York over ’ere, it’s all gotta go, packing up shop. Come on, guvnors, use your mince pies there’s no cherry ripe on my shelf, don’t be shy, make me your best nits and lice.”

It was Reggie, our neighbor. He’d obviously had enough, wanted to sell his last and was heading home. Though glancing at his remaining stock, set out on sturdy counters and hanging from hooks, he’d sold pretty much all of it. He had a good eye for quality and his customers knew it.

A man standing on the far side of Reggie’s stall caught my attention.

My heart stuttered.

Denny?

He was tall, blond, his frame a little on the slight side and he wore a red and white Arsenal beanie just like the one Denny always had on his head.

Quickly, I stepped away from my block, unclipped my chain-glove and joined the horde of dealers and traders on the main thoroughfare through the market. Never once did I let the figure out of my sight. He was talking to someone, gesturing with his hands, his shoulders shifting and his head bobbing.

My stomach tensed with both joy and anger as I sped past several white-painted wooden stalls. If it was Denny I’d be so happy to see him but then I would also throttle his scrawny neck for having me so terrified. I’d been to the police and reported him as a missing person, for heaven’s sake.

“Denny,” I gasped, touching his shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?”

He stopped talking and turned.

Not Denny.

A wave of surprise crossed his eyes, then he tilted his mouth into a smile. “Well hello, beautiful, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Er, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

The older man he’d been talking to slapped him on the back. “Ha, got them dropping at your feet ’ave you, Ed. Used to be like that for me, you know. Make the most of it.” He laughed and his potbelly bounced up and down beneath his grubby butcher’s coat.

“Really, I’m very sorry,” I said, stepping away.

Embarrassment prickled over my skin. As the only female butcher at the market I tried, not with a great deal of success, to keep a low profile. I really didn’t need to hear any more comments about my meat-handling skills or receive any further invitations to play hide-the-sausage or stroke-the-salami. Blokes, young and old, thought they were being original but they weren’t. Not that they would say these things in front of my father. It was common knowledge that would find them being sold at eight quid a kilo to the pet shop guy when he came round on a Monday morning.

“Wait up,” the blond man said.

“No, I’m sorry, my mistake.”

“Do you work here?” he asked.

“Yes, and I have to get back to the block.” I scowled in a not particularly attractive way, hoping to dissuade further conversation.

“But…”

“No.” I shook my head. “Forget it.” I turned and walked head first into what felt like an iron wall. Except it wasn’t a wall, it was a man in a pinstripe suit.

The air was knocked from my chest, but he didn’t stagger or even budge from our sudden impact. He just stood stock still and waited for me to recover.

“Shit. Sorry,” I said, looking at his perfect clothing that I’d just mashed my blood-stained smock against. “I didn’t see you. I was—”

“It’s perfectly okay, madam, no harm done.”

Oh, he spoke nice. Not like me with my Cockney tongue. His vowels were as round as the moon and his words finished with the precision of a sculpting knife.

“But your suit, it’s so…so smart.”

He narrowed his dark eyes until they pinched at the corners. He didn’t smile. “Very nice of you to say so.”

Something about his chiseled, smooth jawline and the slightly-too-long, sleek style of his hair was familiar. As was the suit, it was a beautiful cut, but not today’s fashion. The collar was large and pointed at the tips, the buttons a dull metal and instead of a tie he wore a cream cravat. I’d seen him before. I was sure of it.

“Er, do I know you?” I asked.

“I very much doubt it.”

“But I—”

“My dear, if we had met I would certainly remember.” His gaze dropped down my body, slowly and indulgently, almost as though he could see through my messy work clothes to the lace underwear I always wore—my one nod to being female in this testosterone-soaked place.

My stomach clenched and I was aware that my breaths had become shallow. I gulped in air but it did nothing to improve my oxygenation because his lingering look was like an actual caress. The shouts and bangs of the market faded and all I could hear was my pulse. Instead of being wrapped in permanent cold, my skin heated, like a sudden, swift fever.

He was gorgeous, that fact couldn’t be denied. He had skin like porcelain and his features, despite being strong, wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Vogue. His hair, the way it was smooth and glossy with trimmed sideburns, was quirky, old- fashioned, and I liked it, a lot.

“Good day,” he said, finally shifting his penetrating gaze and stepping away.

I was shaken from my weird trance, and the sounds of the market returned like a volume button being turned up. “Er, yeah, thanks, and you. Good day.”

He bobbed his head and walked past me.

I stared at his wide shoulders, tapered waist and the bottom curve of what looked like a damn cute bum.

Despite what he’d said, I knew I had seen him before. I’d bet my best tenderizer on it.

I flicked my mind back over the last few weeks.

Damn it. Where had that man been when he’d caught my attention?

Suddenly it came to me. It was spotting the cane he held in his right hand that did it—a long black stick with a polished gold upper section, the very end shaped like a snake’s head.

Fuck me sideways, I’d seen him the morning Denny disappeared. Here. Right here. I’d been bartering with old Sid from up Campden way and he’d walked past, chin raised as though sniffing the air and striding along tapping his cane on the sawdust-lined thoroughfare. People had moved out of his way and glanced at him curiously. I’d paused in my haggling and ended up going nearly five pence a kilo down on the chicken breasts, much to Dad’s annoyance.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered.

I glanced to the left. The blond guy I’d mistaken as Denny was staring after the suited man too. He rubbed his chin and worried at his bottom lip, then turned back to his companion, ignoring me completely.

Frantically, I tried to think back to that morning. It had been raining, the sound loud on the ornate pitched roof of the market. Buyers were haggling in various degrees of wetness after dashing from vans to stalls. I’d seen him walk by, Denny had seen him too. I remembered the look on Denny’s face, his jaw had slackened and his eyes had widened. I recalled thinking how the stranger was just Denny’s type—tall, handsome and beautifully attired. I’d gone back to haggling over the Norfolk chickens and then, shit, then, when I’d sealed the deal, Denny had been gone. That was the last time I’d seen my friend, in the same moment I’d seen the beautiful man.

Without hesitation, I set off through the crowd, intent on following. Perhaps he would lead me to a clue about Denny’s disappearance. Heaven knows I had to do something. No other bugger would. The police couldn’t care less. Neither, it seemed, could anyone at Smithfield. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because Denny was gay they didn’t give a toss. In this macho world, gays and women had a struggle fitting in, which was why we’d always stuck together as a pair, Denny and me. We were the odd ones out.

I kept a reasonable distance and allowed traders to fill in the gap between us. The suited man stopped at a sausage stall so I paused, half-hidden behind a forequarter. He was looking at a selection of black puddings hanging from hooks. Looking, no, more like sniffing. It was the way his head was tilted, his nostrils hovering just a foot or two away from the puddings. He fluttered his eyes shut, but only for a brief second and then Anvil, the stall owner, approached him, wiping his bloody hands on his apron.

My man shook his head and stepped away, past a porkpie stand and a delicatessen then out toward the street.

I slipped off my white coat, spotted Cassey serving tea at the Pickled Pig café. She still had curlers in her hair, and a blue flowered headscarf half covered them.

“Can you look after this?” I asked, thrusting my smock at her. “Sure thing, Bea. Where you hot-footing to in such a rush?”

“Just gotta do something,” I said, giving her a quick smile.

“Okay, spill the beans later, will you?”

“Yep, I will.”

The morning light was bright, and stepping through the majestic Victorian archways that circled Smithfield Market, I shielded my eyes.

He’d led me out the exit to Lindsay Street, which was crammed with vans of all shapes and sizes. Right now it also teemed with blokes dragging trolleys stacked with boxes of product this way and that, and business acquaintances bemoaning the price of meat these days.

“Bugger,” I muttered, scanning the scene.

The sunshine didn’t quite reach the opposite side of the road, so it was in semi-darkness.

A flash of gold got my attention.

It was his cane, flicking rhythmically with his steps.

I pulled my sweater sleeves over my fingers. There was frost on the ground and the sharp air nipped my cheeks. Quickly, I weaved between the vans until I was in the shadows of the high buildings opposite, following my mark.

What the hell was I doing? Did I really think this man would lead me to Denny?

No, but what choice did I have? He was the only thing linked to my friend’s disappearance. It was tenuous, yes, but I had to try to find Denny. He could be tied up in a cellar being tortured, or worse still, dead at the bottom of a ditch. I had to know I’d done my best to save him. If I didn’t, how could I live with myself?