Mr Trime hauled out his enormous brass fob watch on a heavy chain. ‘On the dot,’ he said with such satisfaction you might have thought he had driven the 10:42 himself.’
The train pulled in, packed tight – not because of a surge in popularity but because it was down to two carriages, the rest having been requisitioned for troop movements – and the doors at either end of each carriage had hardly opened before passengers started spilling out. The stationmaster and I went into the canteen for much-needed mugs of tea while Dodo dawdled behind to coo at Jeremy, the station’s marmalade cat. The door had hardly swung shut behind me when there was a loud crack.
Tilly, the tea lady, released two things – a small yelp and the saucer in her hand. The second of those rolled along the counter and settled, skittering beside a plate of curled sandwiches. The first was smothered too late by her hand.
‘Car backfiring,’ Mr Trime reassured her but I had heard enough guns in my life to know the difference. It is a sharper, cleaner sound, the one that kills people.
‘Stay there.’ I spun back onto the platform in time to see about twenty people emerging from the clouds of smoke and steam. They were adults except for a small brown-skinned boy and his sister, slightly apart from the body of people, wide-eyed, holding buckets and spades and hands. The crowd parted and one of the passengers, a middle-aged man in a grey suit, broke from it, crying ‘What! What?’ Dodo, helmet askew, appeared to be throttling him. Maybe she was right and insanity was contagious.
‘What the hell?’ I rushed towards them. The man was choking and coughing. He dropped his briefcase to put his hands up to hers but Dodo had a tight grip and showed no inclination to let go.
‘Stop struggling,’ she scolded but the man was not listening.
He clutched at her wrists, staggered two steps sideways and fell onto his left knee, Dodo still gripping him.
‘Let go of my hand,’ Dodo said firmly and I saw that she had clamped her big white handkerchief over his throat and that it was no longer white but soaked in blood.
The man looked at his hand. What? He clawed at the handkerchief. Oh, oh my God. His voice was weakening already when he toppled face-up on the platform, his trilby hat flying, blood pumping between their fingers.
I ran towards my constable and the wounded man. Her hand still gripped the side of his neck but his were both clawing the air while his feet were pedalling like somebody running up a ladder. His breath bubbled. I did not like that pumping. It meant arterial blood.
‘Get out of my way.’ I pushed an old lady, trying to retrieve her spilled shopping, to one side, causing her basket to tip over again.
‘Well, really.’
But there was no time to worry about that. I rooted in my handbag for my own handkerchief and pressed it over Dodo’s right hand but the cotton was saturated instantly, the blood surging through unchecked.
Somebody appeared at my shoulder. ‘Take this.’ I didn’t need to look up to know that voice.
Jimmy thrust his jacket at me, the sleeve rolled into a pack, and I rammed it over our handkerchiefs. At last the flow slowed but not, I feared, because of our efforts.
‘Keep back, please.’ Mr Trime, ignoring my instruction to stay put, was herding curious onlookers away. ‘Give the man some air.’
The doors closed and the guard, unaware that this was anything more than a passenger tripping up in the rush, blew his whistle. As the train began to pull away, the voice of a woman, a young one by the sound of it, rang out from that direction.
‘He’s on the bridge. Watch out, he’s got a blooming gun!’ I looked up to see a stranger, tall, in a floppy-brimmed hat and a long dark coat running over the footbridge, down onto the deserted southbound platform. In a minute he would be through the unmanned exit towards Back Lane. Once there he could easily be lost in the crowds of High Road East. He had a long athletic stride.
‘Stop that train,’ Mr Trime called with some presence of mind. The porter blew his whistle twice but the back carriage had already cleared the platform and was puffing off to Anglethorpe.
A woman was screaming – I never saw the point of doing that – and the two children were trying to calm her down.
‘Oh do be a good lamb,’ the little girl begged.
‘I’ll get him.’ Jimmy was off.
‘No. Stop!’ I shouted – I did not want another death on my hands – but Jimmy sprinted away unheeding. ‘Ring for a doctor.’ I had never bossed the stationmaster around before. Mr Trime rushed towards his office, his ring of keys clinking as he fished them out. ‘And then the police station,’ I called after him. ‘Tell them there could be a man with a gun on the loose.’
The children had been partially successful until I said that and started their mother off again.
‘He shall slay us all,’ she shrieked.
‘That is quite enough of that nonsense,’ the boy reprimanded his mother in a tone he had probably learned from her.
‘And then Anglethorpe,’ I remembered. ‘Tell them to keep all the passengers there for questioning.’
‘Did you shoot him?’ the little boy asked me excitedly but I had no time to deny it.
‘Nobody leave the station,’ I commanded. ‘You can all go into the waiting room.’ But I saw that many people were running away or had already fled.
I kept pressing on the wound over Jimmy’s pack but there was nothing anyone could have done. The eyes stopped flickering and when the blood stopped flowing it was only because the heart was not pumping it.
‘There was no answer at the police station and I couldn’t get them at Anglethorpe,’ Mr Trime declared. ‘They were all out to greet the train and everyone had gone by the time they answered.’
I heard approaching running. Jimmy.
‘He got away,’ he announced breathlessly. ‘I thought I had him on Hamilton Road but I ended up rugby-tackling Mr Amery popping out for his elevenses.’
‘The bank manager?’ I wished I had seen that on another occasion.
‘Probably have to move my account now,’ Jimmy pondered ruefully while he leaned over us both for a better view. He smelt of perfumed soap – mine. ‘Oh, is he—’
‘Yes.’ I used the jacket to cover the victim’s face. ‘I’ll see if I can get funds to pay for a new one.’
‘Oh don’t worry about that.’ But I didn’t need the look on Jimmy’s face to tell me he could ill afford to lose it.
‘You’d better go, Jimmy. I know where to find you.’
I got to my feet, ignoring the well-meant offer of a hand. Jimmy could give me a pull-up any time on Cressida but the day I see somebody offer one to a policeman is the day I’ll start accepting one on duty. ‘But can you call into the police station and tell them what’s happened?’
Why the hell had nobody answered the phone? It wasn’t time for Brigsy’s nap.
‘Certainly can.’ Shocked though he looked, a part of Jimmy was clearly enjoying the experience.
‘Didn’t you hear me shout stop?’
‘Of course.’ Jimmy confirmed as he ambled away. ‘But I knew you didn’t mean it.’
I squeezed Dodo’s shoulder. ‘He’s gone,’ I told her and she turned her bloodied face up.
‘I tried,’ she whispered.
‘You did everything you could.’ I gave her a hand up. Officers can help each other. ‘Go to the ladies. There’s a sink and mirror in there – just behind that waiting room.’ I lowered my voice. ‘You kept a cool head and did a good job just now.’
She pursed her lips and looked at the body. ‘It did not do him any good.’
‘He was beyond saving.’
‘I heard a call for a doctor.’ Tubby Gretham came puffing up and Dodo regarded him with loathing.
‘Get back,’ she snarled with an aggression I hadn’t known was in her, ‘to unbalancing your ledgers.’
I touched Dodo’s arm. ‘See if you can clean yourself up a bit.’
‘Oh.’ She ran her eyes over Tubby. ‘I am so sorry. You actually
are a doctor.’
Tubby patted his pocket to be sure no stethoscope was sticking out. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Who else has so many tincture of iodine stains on their hands and suit?’ Dodo asked simply and walked off towards the waiting room.
‘We’ll make a policewoman of her yet,’ I told my friend as she disappeared inside.
He walked round the dead man. ‘I hear he was shot.’
‘A gun was fired.’ I lifted the jacket off. ‘But I’m not sure it hit him.’
The dead man’s face had a diffident expression, almost like he was embarrassed by the fuss.
‘Well, he didn’t die of a heart attack,’ Tubby observed.
‘A bullet at close range would have passed straight through.’ I turned the head a little to show the neck on the other side undamaged and took the makeshift pack away. The clots pulled off with Dodo’s handkerchief and the injury was quite cleanly exposed now.
Tubby squatted beside me, his knees crackling like dry twigs. He smelt strongly of pipe tobacco and I rather liked it.
‘Puncture wounds from a sharp instrument,’ he diagnosed. ‘Two of them but we’ll need a proper PM to confirm that, of course.’ Tubby glowed at the thought of another outing for his bone saw. ‘People seem to be getting into the habit of being stabbed in the neck lately.’
‘Or somebody is getting into the habit of doing it,’ I pondered grimly.
Tubby stood creakily. ‘So how’s your new constable getting on?’
‘Oh help,’ we heard. I started towards the voice with Tubby Gretham on my heels. ‘Spider.’ It was hissing in terror.
‘I think she’s just answered that question herself,’ Tubby said drily.
33
THE VERMIN OF FLEET STREET
Dodo did her best. She had washed her face and hands but her clothes were beyond wiping down. I sent her home.
‘But I only have one uniform,’ she moaned. ‘And it will take at least a day to get laundered.’
‘Come in your civvies tomorrow and I’ll find you something to do at the station,’ I said. ‘Only wear a longer dress this time.’
‘Oh but Constable Bank-Anthony said using less material helps the war effort,’ she told me, ‘and he thinks I should do even more of that.’
‘I bet he did.’
I went to clean myself up. My uniform was a mess but it would have to do for now. I kept my spare at work ever since a family of field mice had made a nest in the pocket of my best overcoat on Cressida.
Bank-Anthony or Bantony as he had been rechristened – not entirely to his satisfaction – turned up, his usual dapper self. He always managed to look as if his uniform had been made by his personal tailor, even when he had accidentally put on Walker’s coat when they were going out once – and Nippy was a few sizes smaller.
‘Bluddy ’ell,’ Bantony breathed.
‘Mind your tongue,’ I warned him. It was not that such profanities would never get past my tonsils but there were plenty of people around who would be shocked by such language, especially from an officer of the law.
‘What ’appened to ’im?’
‘He died.’
‘Oi can see that.’ Bantony was looking at me oddly but I would worry about that another time.
I felt inside the dead man’s jacket pocket and found a pigskin wallet – three pounds and one ten-shilling note. In the other pocket was a silver cardholder. I pressed a button and the lid sprang open to reveal:
Mr Ardom Dapper, Seed Merchant, 16 Brace Street, Tringford. Telephone Tringford 24
printed on white cards in that whorled style that passes as posh. I flicked through them. The rest of the cards were the same and, therefore, probably his.
‘See if you can find the bullet,’ I told Bantony and he rotated his head as if the projectile might be buzzing about it like a persistent gnat.
‘It could be anywhere.’
‘It could not be in Japan,’ I pointed out, pedantically, I knew, but that was the bad influence of Mr G, who lived for the literal. ‘Look for any sign of it hitting anything.’
Bantony trailed off like a schoolboy on an errand when he wanted to be playing football. It was a lot to ask of one man but with Dodo Chivers gone and our other constables off assisting the redoubtable Sharkey on his energetic but so-far-fruitless quest, there was no one left to help him.
Mr Trime came over. ‘The next train from Anglethorpe is due in five minutes,’ he warned.
‘I’m sorry but it can’t stop here.’
‘I thought as much,’ he said. ‘I’ve already rung to warn them to hold back but is it all right if it passes through? It’ll be on platform 2.’ We were on number 1.
‘I don’t see why not, if we can screen the body,’ I agreed and he went off in search of something to use.
A breeze ruffled the surface of a blood puddle and I shooed Jeremy, the station cat, away from lapping a rivulet flowing off into a cracked slab. Jeremy shrugged. I didn’t know cats could do that but he put Maurice Chevalier to shame with his display of nonchalance.
The stationmaster returned with a porter. They were both laden with blankets.
‘I thought we could cover the body and drape some over the bench,’ Mr Trime explained.
I laid a blue blanket over Ardom Dapper who was now labelled Property of East Anglian Coastal Railways. The train hurtled through, windows filled with the surprised faces of passengers who had been expecting to disembark.
Bantony rejoined me to say he couldn’t find anything.
‘I thought you probably wouldn’t,’ I told him and he bridled, unsure if I was getting at him, but I wasn’t.
‘Your witnesses are getting restless,’ Mr Trime reminded me.
‘Oh yes.’ I had almost forgotten about them. I went over to the waiting room. Of the dozen or so I had instructed to stay only three women were left.
‘They all said they had better things to do,’ Mrs Harvey, the postmistress, explained. ‘But I made them write down their details.’ She passed me a slip of paper.
‘Potatoes, onions,’ I deciphered.
‘On the other side,’ she huffed and I turned her shopping list over.
‘Well, the last one is fake.’ I prodded Hurmun Gurring, Burlin with my finger.
‘The cheeky madam,’ Mrs Harvey seethed. She was a big woman and swelled in indignation like a bullfrog.
‘Tell them what we saw, Mrs H,’ an almost-as-large woman in a faded floral dress urged.
Mrs H folded her arms as people do when about to launch into an anecdote, but she was mercifully brief. ‘The man running away,’ she declared. ‘We all got a good look. He was a tall foreign-looking gent in a long black cloak.’
‘It was a coat,’ I corrected her.
‘I know what I did see,’ Mrs H insisted and the others heartily agreed.
I should have known better than to leave them all together to gossip.
‘And a bat flew away,’ the last woman, large but not up to her companions’ standards, volunteered. She had a turban on. They were all the rage since factory girls started using them to protect their hair from machinery but she looked like a pantomime sultan in hers.
‘Probably a pigeon,’ I reasoned but was instantly voted down. They knew what they had seen and a bloodsucking winged mammal was by far the most likely creature to be flapping around the East Anglian skies.
‘I know a vampire when I do see one,’ the almost-as-large woman insisted because, of course, she had seen oh so many of them recently.
*
A tall middle-aged man in a crumpled light-grey suit stepped forward as I got to the station exit. He was laden with an enormous camera, all the paraphernalia on leather straps round his neck – flash and meters and cylinders for spare lenses and film – all sorts of things that Jimmy would have happily spent all day discussing but didn’t interest me in the least.
‘Inspector Church?’
‘Yes?’ I agreed warily.
‘Gregson of the S
ackwater and District Gazette.’ He put out a hand and I took it. He had a strong grip and direct gaze with dark-blue eyes in the shade of his fedora.
‘I’m afraid you can’t go into the station, Mr Gregson.’ I took my hand away.
‘Might I ask you a few questions?’
‘You can but you will have to walk with me and I’m not promising to answer them.’
‘Thank you.’ He had quite a deep melodious voice that reminded me of a trombone – Tommy Dorsey in a mellow mood maybe.
‘You are very polite for a reporter,’ I commented, as I set off.
‘Would I get a better response if I wasn’t?’ He had a quick easy smile that lifted ten years from his lightly creased face and, without waiting for an answer, went ahead with, ‘Is it true there’s been a murder?’
I was not walking especially quickly but he seemed to have some trouble keeping up.
‘There has been a violent death in suspicious circumstances,’ I conceded.
‘Can you tell me who the victim was?’
‘Not until the family have been informed.’
‘Or how he died?’
‘The same applies.’ I stopped and he did too, gasping for breath. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ Gregson supported himself with an outstretched arm on a lamp post. ‘Sorry, just out of hospital. Had half a lungectomy – or whatever they call it.’
‘TB?’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘Should you be out?’
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