David looked at me for a moment and then nodded. ‘OK. Johnny.’
He used my phone to contact the Yard to obtain details of Lowe’s address.
‘Right, he said,’ he said, replacing the receiver, ‘Let’s go’.
I nodded and grabbed my coat. As we left, David laid a friendly hand on my shoulder.
*
Robert James Lowe lived in a tiny bedsit in a sad little street in Pimlico. His landlady, Mrs Flynn, a thin red-faced Irish woman who could have been a stand-in for Old Mother Riley glared at us suspiciously as David presented his credentials.
‘I’ll have you know I keep a respectable house,’ she whined, a pungent vapour of gin emanating from her virtually toothless mouth. From the way she said it, almost as a chant, I suspected it was a claim that she’d made many times before.
‘That is not in doubt,’ assured David. ‘We’ve come to see your lodger, Robert Lowe.’
‘Oh, him,’ she grimaced. ‘He’s a silent one, I can tell you that. It takes him all his time to say “Good morning”.’
‘Is he at home now?’
‘I couldn’t tell you. He creeps in and out like a ghost and I never know when he’s here or not. Still, he pays his rent on time so I can’t complain.’
‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.
She screwed up her face with thought. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. ‘Now you’re asking,’ she muttered. ‘I honestly can’t remember.’
‘Never mind, if you’ll just show us to his room,’ said David.
‘Now you are sure you’re the genuine police an’ all.’
‘Scout’s honour.’ David saluted.
The old crone led us up a gloomy staircase which smelt of a mixture of damp, old cabbage and rancid fat to a room on the second floor at the back of the building.
‘That’s Mr Lowe’s room. He’s not in serious trouble is he? I’ve my reputation to think of. I told you, this is a respectable house.’
‘It’s nothing you need worry about, Mrs Flynn,’ David said. ‘I assure you your reputation is safe. Now, if you’ll just open up and leave me and my colleague alone…’
With a grimace and a sigh she pulled a large bunch of keys from her apron pocket, selected one and unlocked the door; then she retreated down the pungent staircase.
The room was cramped and dingy with a large window at one end and a kitchen area which was curtained off. It was, however, incredibly tidy. The bed was neatly made and there were no papers or any other everyday detritus lying about the place.
‘A fastidious fellow,’ I observed, pulling open the narrow wardrobe door. Inside was a suit along with two shirts hanging there along with several empty hangers. I went through the pockets but found nothing. An investigation of the drawers revealed a similar state of affairs at first, then I lifted up the old newspaper used as lining and discovered a plain brown envelope nestling underneath.
‘What you got there?’
I emptied the contents of the envelope on to the neat counterpane of the bed. There was a series of newspaper cuttings and a folded sheet of notepaper.
I scanned the cuttings quickly. They had been taken from several newspapers and related to the prostitute murders. I passed them to David. I unfolded the notepaper. In tiny, neat handwriting there was a list of his victims, including the place where he had met them and the time and location where he had murdered them, including Mary. Precise, even in murder.
‘His little aide-memoire to his crimes,’ I observed, showing David the sheet of paper. ‘Obviously, now he’s been flushed out he has no further need for his little museum.’
‘The bastard,’ said David with some emotion as he read it. ‘Somehow it’s worse when you find out the culprit is one of your own.’
I said nothing. I knew that men in the police force were as capable of being saints or sinners as the next man. A uniform did not change your morality. The fact that the murderer was a copper didn’t bother me; I was just relieved that it proved that my brother was innocent.
‘Well, he’ll not be coming back here again,’ I said looking round. ‘It’s clear he’s done a bunk. Taken a few clothes—there’s no suitcase—and gone on the run.’
‘Looks like we’ve got a manhunt on our hands.’
We were just about to leave when I noticed what looked like a small rectangle of paper peeping out of the corner of the mirror which hung over the small fireplace. David was half-way out of the door, so I snatched the paper—which appeared to be some kind of business card—and slipped it into my raincoat pocket.
*
David dropped me outside Charing Cross Hospital. He wished me luck and promised that he’d keep in touch with me regarding Lowe. I nodded grimly and gave him a brief wave as he drove off.
After a lot of palaver inside the hospital I was eventually taken to a small private waiting-room and left for some ten minutes before I was visited by a tall, bald-headed man in a white coat who introduced himself as Mr Carruthers. In a mechanical fashion I shook his hand.
‘I am Paul’s surgeon,’ he explained.
‘How is he?’
‘I will be honest with you, Mr Hawke. There is little point in being otherwise. He is in a very bad way indeed. The X-rays reveal that his internal injuries are more severe than we first thought and he has lost a lot of blood. We are unable to operate at the moment because he is too weak to survive the rigours of such an experience.’
‘Will he die?’
‘The odds are not good. But we will do our best. The next twenty-four hours are critical.’
‘I’d like to see him, please.’
Carruthers nodded. ‘A few minutes…’
I could hardly recognise my brother. There were so many tubes and pipes connected to him. Only his head was visible above the covers. It was still and pale and skeletal. He looked dead already. I kissed his forehead and left.
After leaving the hospital I felt numb for a while. I wandered the streets aimlessly, the image of that pale, lifeless face imprinted on my mind. Slowly, common sense, rationality—call it what you will—came to my rescue. I began to realise that whatever happened to Paul, I had to carry on, I had to function. Moping would do neither of us any good. I had to get on with things.
By now it was nearly noon and I realised that I’d had not had any food all day, so I wandered down to Benny’s to treat myself to his ‘serviceman’s lunch’, which turned out be corned-beef hash and cabbage. It was warm and colourful, that’s all I can say.
‘So how’s the lovely lady? When are you seeing her again?’ asked Benny with a sly grin and a suggestive wink as he cleared my plate away. I hadn’t the heart to tell him she was dead. This would only prompt a wave of questions which I didn’t feel up to answering and would, in the end, only upset the old chap.
I shrugged casually. ‘I keep telling you, Benny, she was just a client. She has her own boyfriend. End of story.’
‘But you made such a lovely couple.’
‘What is this? A café or a marriage-bureau?’
‘For you Johnny, it’s both.’ He grinned. ‘You want another tea…on the house.’
I nodded, returning the grin.
While I sipped the tea I took out the business card from the pocket in my raincoat, which I had draped over the chair beside me at the table. It was for a Doctor Anthony Baker of Ferris Street, London W1. It bore the motto: Discreet consultations available.
I was curious. I reckoned I ought to call upon Dr Baker without delay.
34
Ferris Street was a narrow thoroughfare not far from Harley Street. It was close to the prime medical area of London where the eminent and expensive medics held court, but not actually part of it. This undistinguished and rather dingy tributary was a sort of down-market adjunct where doctors of questionable principles practised. There was quite a number of them, as the preponderance of little brass plaques indicated. Certainly, the peeling stucco portico and shabby front door of Dr Baker’s surgery suggested that
this was a medical practice in the second rank—at best. I’d seen cards like Dr Anthony Baker’s before. The phrasing ‘Discreet consultations’ usually meant, ‘I carry out abortions’. It wasn’t only the reckless working-class lass who finds herself in trouble after her eager soldier boyfriend has returned to his unit, leaving her in the pudding club. That kind of abandon may also be found in the supposedly higher echelons of society. These upper- and middle-class ladies, when similarly inconvenienced, can have no recourse to the local neighbourhood crone with her primitive and life-threatening methods of terminating the pregnancy. They have to seek out unscrupulous professionals who earn a fine living relieving such ladies of their unwanted foetuses for a tidy fee. These medical toads grow rich and fat on the distress of others. And so it has always been, I suppose.
The rather bleak waiting-room was empty when I entered. A matronly woman, who was knitting some amorphous garment in a vomit-inducing shade of green, took my details. I was told that I could have a consultation with Dr Baker when he had finished with the patient he was with at the moment for a fee of two guineas, payable in advance. I doled out the dough with a fixed grin.
I sat twiddling my thumbs for about quarter of hour while the knitting needles echoed like castanets all around me.
Dr Baker’s patient eventually emerged. She was a smart young woman in a fashionable two-piece suit and it was clear that she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and red and she hurried out briskly in a state of controlled distress. She seemed to confirm my suspicions about this not-quite-backstreet practice.
The mad knitter showed me into Dr Baker’s consulting-room. She passed him a form containing my simple details. The doctor himself was perched casually on the edge of his desk. He was younger and sleeker than I expected but there was still the air of the self-satisfied fat cat about him. He was tall with thick blond hair Brylcreemed back into a shiny yellow skull-cap. He balanced a pair of light-brown horn-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose, spectacles which I suspected he did not need, but which he thought made him look more professional, more authoritative, more like a doctor. He read the form and then addressed me with a professional smile.
‘So, Mr Hawke, how can I help you?’
I pulled out one of my business cards and slipped it on to his desk. He snapped it up and, as he perused it, the charm left his face.
‘A private detective?’ he said with some disdain, as though I was akin to a leper or a child-murderer.
‘I need to know some details about one of your patients.’ Baker held out two arms, the palms of his hands outstretched as though he was attempting to hold back a large wave.
‘Oh, oh,’ he said. ‘Just wait a minute. I’ll stop you right now. There is a confidentiality between patient and doctor. I cannot pass on to you any information concerning any one of my patients. Nothing at all. It would be most unethical. You’re wasting your time. If you yourself do not require medical assistance, I must ask you to leave.’
‘I could be saving you a prison sentence,’ I replied smugly. His mouth twitched nervously into an uncertain grin.
‘And how do you make that out?’
‘I’ve a pretty good idea what kind of services you offer here. They are not exactly ethical either, are they?’
‘I think it is time you left.’
‘I’ll leave when you’ve told me what I need to know, or—’
‘Or what?’ Baker snatched up a silver cigarette-box from the desk, pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a lighter he extracted from his waistcoat pocket. It was a nervous, somewhat dramatic gesture. My medical friend was beginning to get worried.
‘You can tell me or the police will be round here like a shot.’
‘The police?’ His voiced edged up an octave and the hand holding the cigarette began to waver. ‘What…what on earth are you talking about?’
‘One of your patients—George Lowe—is a murderer wanted by the police.’
‘Murderer?’ His face was drip-white now and all the bravado was melting away fast.
‘He’s been killing girls, prostitutes. You may have read about the murders in the papers. He strangles the girls for no reason at all. Or no reason that we can fathom at the moment. He’s killed three up to now.’
‘George Lowe?’
‘That’s the fellow. He needs to be caught and quickly. Now I want to know what he comes to see you about. What you know about him. Anything that will help me track him down. Tell me and I’ll try and keep the police away from your files.’
Baker puffed aggressively on his cigarette and briefly his face was obliterated by smoke. ‘How on earth do I know you’re telling the truth? For all I know you could be a madman—’
‘Not mad, just a little annoyed and frustrated. It is very possible that Lowe has killed my brother and as long as he’s at large he is a threat to other women. Now I suggest that you tell me what I want to know or I may very well forget I’m some kind of gentleman.’
There was a silence. Baker stared at me for a while, his features twitching with uncertainty, then he stubbed out his cigarette and moved awkwardly to a filing-cabinet behind his desk.
‘Mr Lowe has been seeing me for about three months now. He has venereal disease. VD. In his case it is very serious.’ He opened the drawer, pulled out a file and consulted it. ‘He’d been with some girl, some tart, I suspect, and caught a real dose of it.’
‘How serious is serious?’
‘The man is dying.’
‘From the clap?’
‘He is in a very advanced stage of syphilis. He came to me quite late, too late in fact. It is often the case that men who contract the disease go at first into a state of denial—do not believe it is actually happening to them. Then, when the rash and the ulcers come, they try to treat it themselves with creams and potions from the chemist. To no avail, of course. When Lowe first came to me a few months ago he’d been contaminated for nearly two years.’
I gasped. ‘My God,’ I said, the words escaping as barely a whisper.
‘There are four stages to the spread of syphilis: primary, secondary, latent and late. By the latent stage the disease, which spreads in the bloodstream, has begun to invade the nervous system. This brings headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness and can bring about seizures. Lowe has gone beyond that. He is in the late stage. The syphilitic deposits are attacking his liver, his heart and his brain.’
‘His brain?’
‘Yes.’
‘What effect will this have on his behaviour?’
‘Eventually it brings about psychosis—’
‘In simple terms?’
‘He will become mentally disturbed—deranged.’
‘I think he’s already there. Does he know all this?’
Baker shifted his glance away from me. ‘Not…not exactly. Not in detail. He knew that his time was limited. He’s intelligent enough to know that he’s dying.’
‘You couldn’t help him?’
Baker shook his head. ‘He was too far gone by the time I saw him. I gave him mercury injections which helped to slow the rate of deterioration, but eventually the body becomes immune to them. It is like trying to mend a hole in a dam with a few pieces of wood. At first you may reduce the leak to a trickle but eventually the force of the water will not only sweep the wood away but crack the dam.’
I got the picture. It wasn’t a pleasant one. ‘What do you know of Lowe?’
Baker shook his head. ‘Hardly anything. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t ask probing questions about my patients’ lives. People come to me with an illness and I just treat that.’
‘You must have some details, some opinions. Come on, Baker. This man is a killer. We have to catch him.’
Baker casually fiddled with his glasses. I wanted to punch him.
‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘he was a man of few words. Taciturn, I would say. Clearly, he was oversexed. He saw women merely as objects to satisfy his appetite. He claimed that when he was well he needed sexual
intercourse almost every day, which for a single man presents certain problems. No doubt he bought various magazines to help him ease the need and he talked of visiting the Windmill theatre to see “the girls”.’
‘Did he mention any pubs that he frequented to pick up prostitutes? The Barley Mow for instance.’
Baker shook his head. ‘The topic never came up,’ he said suavely. ‘As I’ve already said, I concern myself solely with the ailment, Mr Hawke. I have neither the time nor inclination to indulge in chit-chat with the patients whom I see.’
The point this jumped-up medic was making was reasonable enough; it was the sneering manner in which he expressed it that irritated me.
‘Had you no inkling that this man could be dangerous?’
Baker gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I am a doctor. You’re the detective. The man was obviously distressed and anxious. With his diagnosis who wouldn’t be? But apart from gleaning some notion about his sexual appetite, I knew nothing about the man other than his medical condition.’
‘Not even what he did for a living?’
‘No. It wasn’t relevant.’
‘How long has he got?’
‘Three months at the most, probably less. The disease speeds up in its latter stages, but this is unpredictable.’
‘You told him all this?’
‘Oh, yes, there is no point in concealing the truth. He seemed to take it very well. As I said, he was taciturn. He accepted my diagnosis without emotion. He just wanted me to keep the inevitable at bay for as long as I could. Recently I have provided him with some laudanum to help deaden the pain.’
‘How often does he visit you?’
‘It varies. On average once a fortnight.’
‘And when was the last time you saw him?’
Baker consulted his notes. ‘Early last week. I saw a definite change in him.’
‘In what way?’
‘He looked more haggard and mentally more distracted. He complained that the pain was getting worse. As it spreads through the body the limbs begin to stiffen and I could see that this was happening to him.’ Baker gave a wry grin. ‘I had to tell him that there was little else I could do for him apart from increasing the dose of laudanum. I did ask him if there was anyone to look after him when he became bedridden. He said, “No.”’
Comes the Dark Page 15