Murder by the Book by Eric Brown

decorated with old posters advertising Crystal Palace speedway, long-gone circuses and the Festival of Britain.
    He looked around for a place which might afford him a vantage point of the mill’s interior. A low factory stood to the right of the mill, and to the left a bomb site, this one boasting a crater which had filled with water and sprouted attendant shrubbery like some unlikely urban oasis.
    Across the road from the mill was a row of neglected back-to-backs, none of which appeared to be occupied. He approached the closest and tried the door; it swung open at his touch and he stepped inside. He was faced with fungus-infested walls, bare floorboards and a flight of broken stairs. He climbed them, stepped over a collapsed roof beam, and entered what had once been a bedroom.
    From the broken window he had a good view of the mill opposite. Beyond the high, arched entrance he made out the concrete floor, pitted where cluster bombs had detonated during the Blitz. Fifty yards beyond the façade was the interior wall the blackmailer had mentioned, perhaps ten feet high and coated with scabbed whitewash.
    He could not see what lay beyond the derelict mill. He looked at his watch: it was one fifty. There was no time to circumnavigate the building and check a possible rear approach. Anyway, he suspected that the blackmailer might already be in position, awaiting his arrival.
    On the bomb site to the left of the mill, a gang of children played with makeshift wooden Tommy guns and half-brick grenades. Their feverish cries, and the frenzied barking of a dog, drifted to him on the warm breeze, along with the scent of red roses which wound up the drainpipe beside the window. He closed his eyes and he was back in Madagascar: the warm wind, the scent of frangipani, even the heart-thumping fear.
    He opened his eyes and asked himself what he was doing in a bombed-out terraced house in south London waiting to deliver a hundred pounds to some desperate blackmailer. Oddly enough, in the fragrant, balmy evenings outside Antananarivo he’d often asked himself what he was doing there, awaiting the first shells of the night from the Vichy French.
    He scanned left and right. Other than the marauding kids, there was no sign of life.
    He climbed down the broken stairs, emerged into the sunlit street, and crossed the road to the mill. The timber planks in the fence were fractured in places, or entirely missing in others. He found an accommodating gap and eased himself through. The façade rose before him, dark and satanic. He passed through the high archway and paused just inside the threshold. The floor before him was an obstacle course of deep pits, tangled pipework and fallen beams. He plotted a route through the debris and set off. As he walked, he was very aware of his thudding heartbeat. He knew that in all likelihood the blackmailer was watching him. He clutched the envelope in his coat pocket, wishing he’d had the time to seek out a weapon more deadly than the flick-knife that rested beside the envelope.
    He picked his way through the mess of fallen bricks and tangled electrical wiring. The interior whitewashed wall was perhaps ten yards away now, with the dark, rectangular shape of a doorway at its centre. He approached the wall and, when he was three yards away, stopped. He slowed his breathing and listened. Only the distant sound of birdsong reached him, a child’s protracted war cry, and the ever-present drone of city traffic in the background.
    He reached into his pocket, placed the envelope on the ground, then stood and began walking back towards the façade.
    He was beginning to breathe a little more easily when the blackmailer struck. He heard a footfall behind him and half turned, but not quickly enough to catch sight of his assailant – and not fast enough to evade the blow directed at the back of his head. The impact knocked him off his feet and he fell face down, groaning with pain. He tried to get up,