relief. His words seemed to have done the trick and this sinister meeting had passed without incident. But if he stayed here amongst such desperate men he knew there would inevitably be a next time and then he might not get off so lightly. For all he knew the other man was still lurking somewhere, waiting for him to slump back into sleep before he made another attempt to relieve Glen of his precious belongings. It was time he found somewhere else to lay down his head.
Sack of belongings secured to the worn belt of his frayed trousers and concealed underneath a shabby army greatcoat, holey woollen hat pulled right down over his bush of matted hair, equally holey scarf wrapped around his neck, he began to make his way out of the arches, hoping to depart without attracting any attention to himself.
He’d taken no more than half a dozen steps when he stopped dead, hearing someone crying nearby. It was unmistakably the sound of a woman in great distress. He frowned. The women he had encountered in the underworld he now inhabited were definitely not the sort to display any shred of vulnerability, not in a place like this where they would without doubt be taken advantage of by those who perceived themselves as stronger. But as desperate as he was to be away from here Glen couldn’t bring himself to leave a woman at the mercy of the rabble who sheltered in the arches.
Following the sound of the crying, he manoeuvred his way around several sleeping bodies, all clutching their pitiful belongings, and towards a recess in the wall. As he neared it, the outline of a huddled figure, knees bent, arms wrapped around its head, materialised in the gloom. From what he could see it didn’t appear that this woman was the sort who belonged in a place like this. Although rumpled, her clothes looked to him far too clean and in too good a condition for someone who lived rough. Glen decided that the woman must have lost her way, found herself in this den of iniquity by accident and needed help finding her way out.
He leaned over and placed one hand gently on her knee. He was just about to offer his help in whatever way he could, when a loud scream of terror rent the air. Following that, he felt a tremendous thud against the side of his head. As he crumpled to the floor and before everything blacked out, Glen realised that his life probably was going to end in this hellhole of a place, not while attempting to fend off an assailant but because he’d tried to be a Good Samaritan.
CHAPTER TWO
The searing pain in his head brought Glen back to consciousness. If someone had told him a piston was inside his skull, thumping away rhythmically at full speed, he wouldn’t have questioned it. But the pounding in his head wasn’t the only thing he was having to contend with. Someone was shrieking . . . hysterically. In his befuddled state he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman or decipher what they were yelling. But the racket they were making was preventing him from gathering his jumbled thoughts together, to work out just what had happened to him.
He managed to groan, ‘Please will you stop that yelling or my head will explode?’
Mercifully the shouting ceased and a woman’s voice cried, ‘Oh, thank God you’re not dead! Thank God. Thank God.’ Then her tone of relief became defensive. ‘But if I had killed you, I was only acting in self-defence.’
Glen was tentatively examining the side of his head with one hand, fully expecting to find half of it gone considering the pain he felt. His fingers touched a lump under his hat. It felt as big as an ostrich egg and he let out a small cry of: ‘Ouch!’ How on earth did he come to be lying here on the ground with an injury like this to his head? Then memory flooded back and he accused her, ‘You attacked me!’
Her tone of voice was still defensive. ‘Well, what did you expect me to do? Just sit back and allow you to do whatever you were about to?’
He managed to force open his eyes but couldn’t lift his head to look at his assailant as he was feeling disorientated, still seeing stars, though not so many as when he’d first come round. Scowling down at the hard ground, he