One Fight at a Time Read Online Free Page A

said.
    “Fifty,”
    “Forty-five, is as far as I’ll go.”
    “Fucking crook,” Pride said and held out his right hand.
    Nicholson stood up and shook it.
    “Meanwhile, I’m working on the scheme of a lifetime,” Pride said. “It’ll make us a fortune. I just need you to rubber stamp the project.”
    Nicholson looked alarmed. Pride stared at him. The alarm morphed into mild terror, Pride’s stare into a wide smile. Nicholson managed two words.
    “What project?”
    “I want to buy the old Scarlet Fever Hospital in Brockley Wood.”
    This was a massive surprise. Nicholson felt his heart rate rise by fifty beats. The news that that anybody would want to buy the place was a minor miracle. The fact that it was Rodney Pride however, sucked out all the joy out of the prospect.
    “Why?”
    “Can you make yourself available tomorrow, around noon?”
    Back in the street, Nicholson looked at his watch. 4.35. He decided he might as well go home. Give himself time to get into the right mood for the evening ahead. His wife had dinner planned for some relatives on the take. Another bunch of idle bastards he was expected to support.
    He got into the Rover. Pride watched him from his office window.
     

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Swindon railway station was dismal. Overnight April showers had segued into steady morning rain and an aggressive easterly wind was blowing straight along the westbound platform. The temperature was ignoring the calendar. It may officially have been spring, but less than forty degrees Fahrenheit was all the day was offering.
    Zoe Easton managed to squeeze into the Waiting Room. She had tried the Ladies Waiting Room, but it was just as cold as the great outdoors. Most of the passengers heading to Bristol were packed into this tiny space, where a coal fire was hurling out three or four kilowatts of heat. The Station Master had used up his last ration coupons on behalf of his customers. Zoe stood next to a tall man reading the Daily Sketch and tried to breathe.
    *
    Ed Grover was due to board the transport for Reykjavik in five days’ time. Meanwhile, he had his seventy-two hour pass. Salome had developed an oil leak, so Whelan ferried him the twelve miles to Swindon railway station in another jeep.
    Grover wasn’t too great in small spaces with people packed shoulder to shoulder. He had discovered this while pitching and rolling in a landing craft in the Channel. So he sat down on the bench in a shelter along the platform, pulled up his greatcoat collar, crossed his arms and banged his hands against his shoulders in an effort to keep warm. He looked across the line towards the railway yard. Swindon had always been a railway town and since the end of the war had returned to the business of producing steam locomotives. But it was not the sleek new monsters standing outside the building sheds that caught Grover’s attention. Directly in his line of sight, behind the eastbound platform, were four battered landing craft, stacked one upon the other. There was a message on the sides in white paint, reading from the top LCP down to the bottom one – 2 , 400 produced here for D Day . He began to wonder if he had crossed the channel in one of them...
    *
    In January 1944, sick of watching men he admired take off into the blue, not knowing if they would return, Grover got himself transferred to the 21st US Armoured Division. He celebrated his twenty-third birthday on the evening of June 4th. Just a small gathering of buddies around a couple of tables in the bar. Only three glasses of beer allowed to each man. They were all on standby for an operation that would see them make history, providing the weather cleared. So they toasted Ed in the stuff that made Milwaukee famous and tried not to think about what was coming. An inch short of six feet tall and a comfortable eleven stones in weight, Grover was fit and tough and respected. The savage army haircut had not succeeded entirely in disguising his dark brown curls. The