Read Online Twelve Minutes to Midnight by Christopher Edge - Free Book Online

in from the river, bringing with it a fog that clung to the sides of the buildings, suddenly shrouding the street in shadows even though it was nearly midday. Passers-by were like grey ghosts shuffling through the smoky soot-stained air, reaching out to steady themselves as they stumbled half-blinded along the road. Penelope had to quicken her step to keep Jenkins in sight, dodging past the other pedestrians blocking her path as the clerk plunged onwards into the gloom.
    They were nearing the Thames now, the hum and hiss of life on the river penetrating through the cloaking fog. Penny heard the clatter of loading barges, lost in the shadows of the embankment, their moorings creaking as ropes were pulled tight. Through the smoke and steam, she could just make out the indistinct shapes of steamboats with red and green eyes of fire plying the treacherous pathways of the great river, their shrill horns shaking the air.
    Pushing her way through a loitering crowd clustered around a street trader hawking his wares out of a wheelbarrow, Penny fought to keep Jenkins in view. She ignored the thrusting hands of a young beggar clamouring for change as the fog rising from the river thickened around them, blocking her view to only inches ahead.
    “Confound it,” Penny fumed, as shaking off the urchin she stumbled onwards, her hands scrabbling against the granite wall of the embankment for guidance. Then the wind shifted, and ahead of her in the gloom, she glimpsed Jenkins’s portly figure, his dark grey suit almost lost in the fog. He was heading across Lambeth Bridge. 
    Penny hurried forward, her footsteps clattering up the steep cobbled approach that led to the bridge. Its ugly iron framework squatted in the mud of the Thames, the wide spans of wire cables curving across the river wreathed in mist. Passing an abandoned toll booth, Penny hurried along the footway. Jenkins was some thirty paces ahead of her, his grey figure stepping like a phantom through the smoke and shadows. Penny quickened her step.
    As they neared the far side of the bridge, a line of high chimneys rose out of the fog. Jets of smoke and steam spouted from the dark warehouses and factories, creating a scene that looked more like one of Flinch’s visions of Hell than the London Penelope knew. Pulling her cloak across her mouth to shield herself from the stench of industry, she followed Jenkins as he hurried across the cobbles towards the Horseferry Road.
    At the corner of the street, an immense shipping advertisement covered the entire side of a building, its once bright colours now streaked with soot and dust. In his grey business suit Jenkins looked oddly out of place as he plunged into the crowd that thronged the square where the river met the road. Rough journeymen loaded carts with sacks and barrels, whilst dirty-faced boys played leapfrog over broken street posts. In the gutter, a half-naked tramp picked through the rubbish, flinching from the whip crack of a passing carriage. The filthy street was filled with every kind of squalor.
    Penny hurried on, dogging Jenkins’s trail as he fled into the warren of steep streets, heading west. Where was the man going? Ahead of them a deadlock of carts had come to a sudden standstill as the load from one lay spilled across the cobbles. A curious gaggle of bystanders pressed noisily around the scene, drawn by the clash of wheels and hooves. As the two drivers exchanged threats, the clamour from the crowd rose at the promise of violence.
    The pavement narrowed as Penny tried to elbow her way through the press. Stepping into the road, she winced as her boot slipped in the steaming ordure left by the horses. Her anger rising, she pushed her way through the crowd, just in time to see Jenkins disappearing through the doors of a dingy public house.
    Penny looked up at the shabby sign hanging above its entrance – The Three Crowns – but from the dirt-encrusted windows and the two drunks slumped in the gutter outside, she