He levered himself out of his chair and opened a filing cabinet behind him. Pulled out a file and gave it to me.

It was only about five pages long. 'Is that it?' I asked incredulously.

Wilf looked offended. 'What did you expect? A novel? Every word counts. It is a distillation of years of knowledge. Our clients are financiers, not gentlemen of leisure with nothing better to do than settle down for a good long read. How many words do you need to describe one of your trials, in any case?'

I sniffed. 'I was expecting a bit more.'

'You'll survive the disappointment. Go and read it. Then, if you want my recommendation, go and read your own newspaper.'

CHAPTER 5

It was past five when I emerged, and a day of glorious weather. Not the sort of day to be working. Do not misunderstand me; I am a conscientious man. I work hard and have no trouble staying up all night or hanging around in the rain for hours when necessary. But sometimes the allure of life is irresistible. London, in all its glory on a spring evening, was everything that made work, however honest, seem very much a second-best option.

I loved London, and still do. I have now travelled to many cities, although at that stage in my life I had seen little, but have never come across anywhere which even remotely compares with it. Just looking up and down the street in which Seyd & Co was located provided enough material for a dozen novels. The beggar sitting, as he always did, by the jeweller's opposite, singing a song which was so execrable people gave him money to keep quiet. The delivery boys giggling to themselves over some joke. The bearded man in strange clothes walking quietly on the other side, keeping close to the wall. Perhaps he was the richest person in the street? Perhaps the poorest? The old man with a military cast to him, dignified and correct; a doorman or porter, whose best days passed some forty years previously when he breathed the air of India or Africa. But punctilious, with shoes shined and trouser creases pressed like razors.

The merchants and brokers and agencies and manufactories which could be found down the grimy little alleys and in the courtyards had not yet disgorged their occupants; they would stay as the light faded or until the work was done. Contracts were being drawn up, shipments prepared, cargoes checked over. Auctions of goods were under way in the hall over the road, which had drawn merchants in furs, just as earlier in the day the room had thronged with traders in wax or whale blubber or pig iron. The food stalls to feed the office boys and clerks were setting up; the smell of sausages and fish was just a faint tang in the air, although it would get stronger as the evening wore on. The odd pair walking together in conversation, one a huge African, dark as night, the other a pale-skinned, weedy-looking man with blond hair, Scandinavian, at a guess. Sailors probably, their ship docked a mile or so up river after a journey of thousands of miles to deliver its cargo of – what? Tea? Coffee? Animals? Guano? Ore? Precious jewels or dirty minerals?

Just one street. Multiply it by thousands and you have London, sprawling over the landscape, containing every vice and virtue, every language, every kindness and cruelty. It is incomprehensible, unpredictable and strange. Huge wealth and greater poverty, every disease you could imagine, and every pleasure. It had frightened me when I first arrived; it frightens me now. It is an unnatural place, as far from the Garden of Eden as you could imagine.

I had several things to do, and most of them needed the Duck. I had not eaten all day; I wanted to read Wilf's words of wisdom and I needed to resign from my job. The Duck offered food, a quiet table, and sooner or later it would offer the sight of my editor propped up against the bar, as he always was before he went in to oversee the production of the next morning's paper. Robert McEwen was a man of predictable habits. At five-thirty in the evening he would travel from Camden to the newspaper's offices. He would walk to the pub and stay for half an hour, rarely saying a word to a soul; under his arm would be a copy of that morning's paper. If he was in a good mood, it would remain there, untouched. If he felt we had been beaten in some particular he would pull the paper out impatiently, look at it, put it back, or rap it on the counter. The office kept a boy in the pub especially to watch him. 'He's rapping,' would come the report, and a collective groan would go up. He would stump in, glowering, and sooner or later would lose his temper. Someone would be shouted at. An office boy would be cuffed around the ear. A pile of paper would be thrown at someone's head.

Then the storm would pass and we could get down to business, and McEwen would become as he usually was: concentrated, moderate, reasonable and sensible. He could not be one without occasionally being the other, and the evening would pass until near three in the morning when he, and the paper, could be put to bed, duty done, the world informed, the presses rolling.

The Chronicle, to Robert McEwen, was not so much a newspaper, it was a mission. He considered it a moral force in the world. Most people – including the majority of those who wrote for it – thought it was just a newspaper. McEwen disagreed. He brought all the fervour of the lapsed Presbyterian to his task, and set about educating the public, and damning the powerful in error, with all the intensity of John Knox castigating sinners. The newspaper, it should be said, was a good one, but not noted for its sense of humour. Not for the Chronicle so much as a photograph, let alone the nonsense dreamt up by the Daily Mail, the cartoons, the competitions, or any of the other tricks devised to squeeze a halfpenny from the hands of the reading masses. My line of business he considered to verge on the frivolous, but crime is essentially a moral tale. Evil defeated, sin punished. Frequently, neither of these events happened and for the most part evil did very nicely indeed. But that too could point up a lesson.

Besides, McEwen had a weakness for a story, and the annals of the Bow Street Magistrates Court or the Old Bailey generated many a good one. I had even won his favour, or believed I had, for he was notorious for never encouraging anyone. His emotional range went from towering rage to silence, and silence was as near as he got to praise. My work generally passed without comment, but I had of late been asked to write editorials on the Liberal Government's policy towards the poor and on its latest measures to combat crime.

I thus existed in two worlds, for journalism is as class-conscious as any other part of society. Reporters are the manual labourers; most begin as clerks or office boys, or work on provincial papers before coming to London. They are trusted with facts, but not with their interpretation, which is the prerogative of the middle classes, the editorial writers, whose facility at opinion is assisted by their perfect ignorance of events. These grand fellows, who like to lard their editorials with quotations from Cicero, are paid very much more for doing very much less. Few even consider the idea of spending hours outside a courtroom waiting for a verdict, or camping out by a brazier at the dockyard gates to report on a strike.

It was like a betrayal to go into the leader office – they do not even share the same room with us, for fear of contamination – and sit with pen and paper to enlighten the nation on the deficiencies of the criminal justice bill, or complain about rampant drunkenness due to the efforts of brewers to profit by driving the poor ever deeper into despair. I enjoyed it, though, and thought I was quite adept as well, although as often as not McEwen would rewrite my efforts so that my words advocated the exact opposite of my real opinions.