The Loo Sanction Read Online Free PDF

Piccadilly, and deeper into Covent Garden with its odd mélange of market and theatrical activities. Italian wholesale fruit companies, seedy talent agencies, imported olive oil, and a school of modern dance and ballet—tap a specialty.
    Near a streetlamp, a solitary hustler carnivorously watched him approach. She was plump and fortyish, her legs chubby above thick white knee socks. She wore a short dress and a school blazer with emblem, and her stiff platinum hair was done in two long braids that fell on either side of her full cheeks. Obedient to recent police regulations, she did not solicit verbally, but she put one thumb into her mouth and rocked her thick body from side to side, making her eyes round and little girllike. As he passed, Jonathan noticed the scaly cake of her makeup, patched over, but not redone each time she sweated some off in the course of her work.
    As he got deeper into the market, the acrid smell of traffic gave way to the high sweet smell of spoiled fruit, and the litter of paper was replaced by a litter of lettuce leaves, slimy and dangerous underfoot.
    Down a dark side street, an out-of-tune piano thumped ragged chords as the silhouettes of tired dancers leaped over drawn window shades. Young girls sweating and panting in their damp exercise costumes. Stars in the making.
    â€œPenny for the Guy, mister?”
    He spun around, his back against the brick wall, both hands open before his chest.
    The two children yelped and ran down the street, abandoning the old pram and its pitiful, floppy effigy wearing a Sneezy the Dwarf mask.
    Jonathan called after them, but his shout served only to speed them on. When the street was quiet again, he laughed at himself and tucked a pound note into the Guy’s pocket, hoping the children might sneak back later to retrieve it.
    He walked on through the gaggle of lanes, then turned off into a cul-de-sac where there were no streetlamps. The end of a dilapidated court was blocked off by heavy double doors of weathered, splintery wood that swung silently on oiled hinges. The black within was absolute, but he knew he had found his way because of the rancid, cumin smell of ancient sweat.
    â€œAh, there you are, lad. I’d just decided to come looking for you. It’s easy enough to get lost if you’ve never been here before. Here, follow me.”
    Jonathan stood still until MacTaint had opened the inner door, flooding the inky court with pale yellow light. They entered a large open space that had once been a fruit merchant’s warehouse. Odd litter was piled in the corners, and two potbellied coal stoves radiated cheerful heat, their long chimney pipes stretching up into the shadows of the corrugated steel roof some twenty-five feet overhead. Well spaced from one another, three painters stood in pools of light created by bulbs with flat steel shades suspended on long wires from above. Two of them continued working at their easels, oblivious to the intrusion; the third, a tall cadaverous man with an unkempt beard and wild eyes, turned and stared with fury at the source of the draft.
    Jonathan followed MacTaint through the warehouse to a door at the far end, and they passed into a totally different cosmos. The inner room was done in lush Victoriana: crystal chandeliers hung from an ornate ceiling; blue-flocked wallpaper stood above eggshell wainscoting; a good wood fire flickered in a wide marble fireplace; mirrors and sconces on all the walls made an even distribution of low-intensity light; and comfortable deep divans and wing chairs in soft blue damask were in cozy constellations around carved and inlaid tables. A full-blown woman in her mid-fifties sat on one of the divans, her flabby arm dangling over the back. The bright orange of her hair contested with the blood-red of her pasty lipstick, and festoons of bold jewelry clattered as she screwed a cigarette into a rhinestone holder.
    â€œHere we are,” MacTaint said as he shuffled in his