Truth Dare Kill

by Gordon, Ferris,

  “Where?”

  “Mum said a place in the country. I never really wanted to know.”

  “How long?”

  “About six months or so. When he came back he was quieter, lots quieter. And he’d changed – not that the others saw it – I did.”

  “How?”

  “Deceitful. Got up to things around the house. Made mischief, but never got caught. He gave Mum a hard time though. Couldn’t forgive her.”

  “When did Kate find out? I mean about Tony and her father?”

  For the first time since I forced my way in to her home, Liza Caldwell smiled. “Why, Mr McRae, you’re not as clever as I thought.”

  I sat stunned. “No one’s told her?”

  “Who? Her own father died a few years after mine. Left us this place in his will. Conscience money. My mother died without telling anyone in the big house. Only Tony and I know.”

  “And why haven’t you told her? For god’s sake, woman, you let her commit a cardinal sin!”

  “Is it? Why is it, Mr McRae? Tony was denied his birthright, now he’s getting it. Sort of. He’s my brother.”

  “But he’s Kate’s brother too!”

  “Only half.”

  “Dear god. So this is why you wanted to make me think he was dead? Why you played along with them?”

  “Can you blame us?”

  Us? What was Kate’s motivation if she didn’t know? But in a way I couldn’t blame Liza, or even – in a moment of rare generosity of spirit – Tony. The scandal would have destroyed everyone. I was the loser so far. And so was Kate Graveney – if she ever got to learn about it.

  Before I could ask her more – like who used the boudoir upstairs – I became dimly aware of the very familiar sound of a police bell. So familiar that I didn’t immediately pick up on the notion that it was coming this way. The Flying Squad. For me. I heard tyres squeal outside. I jumped past Liza and into the kitchen, bashed open the back door and nearly took a nose-dive down the steps into the garden. I raced over the grass and through the canes holding up last year’s dead plants.

  Before the first cries followed me I was over the high wall at the back and in the back garden of the house in the next street. I looked wildly about, but couldn’t see a gap. Then I did, but it was a dozen houses away. I began hauling myself over walls and crashing through privets until I found a gap of daylight. Along the way I lost my hat. I wrenched it from the hedge, sprinted for the side of the house and was through and into the street, fleck and shrubbery flying from me like a runaway horse at Aintree.

  Way behind me I could hear the clanging start up as the chase began again. A car was heading towards me. I leaped out and flagged it down. It screeched to a halt. The woman driver rolled down her window.

  “You idiot! I could have killed you!”

  I wrenched open the door and pulled her out. The engine was still running and I whacked the car in gear, leaving the poor woman shrieking and wailing in the middle of the road. I had about a minute to get round the corner and into the High Street. I flung the wheel round and round and took corners in a screech of rubber. I broke on to the High Street and abandoned the car by the roadside.

  I turned my collar down, removed the dents and debris from my hat, and began walking slowly and calmly to the underground entrance. Police were checking faces at the station; I did an about turn and walked back down the road. A bus was stopping up ahead. I ran after it as it began chugging away, leapt and caught the bar. The conductor grabbed my arm.

  “Only just, mate! Only just!”

  I managed to pant out, “Where are you going?”

  “Cor, mate! You nearly kills yoursel’ an’ you don’t know where you’re going? Marble Arch, mate, that’s where. An’ that’ll be threepence, if you don’t mind.”

  I didn’t mind. I didn’t care. So long as I had some breathing space to get my thoughts straight and plan my next moves. One way or another I was going to get some answers.

  TWENTY

  The chase across the gardens and the sprint for the bus left me with jelly legs. I hadn’t eaten or slept properly for days and was fighting flu and a flood of bad memories. I must have looked a nightmare to the other worthy citizens on the bus. I stank to high heaven too. A couple of old women tut tutted me. I couldn’t blame them. As my heart slowed to around two hundred, I tried to think, tried to draw on my SOE training. It was simple; I needed a safe house. I changed buses three times and kept away from empty streets or boys in blue as best I could until I got to my goal.

  I kept telling myself Soho was the last place they’d be looking for me. But I had my hat wedged down over my face just the same. It was lunchtime – no time to be entering a whorehouse, though there were a few half-hearted blandishments from girls on corners or their pimps. My big worry was the reception I’d get. But I was at the end of my strength. I was dizzy with fatigue. If I wasn’t welcome here, I might as well phone Wilson and tell him to come and get me. I turned into Rupert Street and stood leaning against the door jamb and knocked.

  Mary opened the door with a smile, then the smile evaporated. “You in big trouble Danny! Your picture in papers. They say you a big time no-good murderer. I no want trouble here.”

  “What? What are you talking about, Mary? Trust me. Please let me in.”

  She heard the desperation in my voice and by rights should have slammed the door on this filthy tramp – newspapers or no newspapers. Instead she took a quick look round the street and dragged me into the hall. She pressed me against the wall.

  “You stay here. No move.”

  I stood shoulders drooping while she scampered into her parlour and came out clutching a Daily Sketch.

  “You see. You see. You front page.” She shoved it at me. I took it and slid down the wall till I was sitting on the floor. I gazed at the photo and the screaming front page headlines: RIPPER ON THE LOOSE! The photo was of me. In my sergeant’s uniform. They must have got it from Army files. I looked much younger than the image I’d stared at this morning. But it still looked like me. I looked up in bewilderment. Mary was standing over me, her arms folded and her eyes slitted. I read on:

  The Ripper strikes again! But this time police have a lead suspect from evidence found at the scene. A manhunt is underway to find former Sergeant Daniel McRae…”

  Police Inspector Herbert Wilson told reporters that “Every murderer finally makes the mistake that catches them out. A gun was found at the scene of this latest vicious crime, covered in the murderer’s finger prints. We believe the weapon – a service revolver – was dropped when the murderer was disturbed. Thanks to diligent police work, we are able to match the fingerprints from the gun with those of a known criminal, Daniel McRae…”

  God hadn’t finished with me yet. Caldwell and Wilson were his avenging angels. I laughed, but was near my wit’s end. This fifth girl had died two nights ago, when I was lying half demented in the shed by the Serpentine. When I woke in a strange place with blood on my hands. As I read and reread the words, my flabby grip on sanity began to slip again. I thought I’d given the gun to Millie. What was it doing by the body?

  I looked up at Mary. “I don’t understand. I don’t… I didn’t…” But I hadn’t a clue what I had or hadn’t done. I must have looked pathetic and not much of a threat, for she grabbed the paper from me.

  “On feet, Danny. Stop messing my hall. Customers no like.”

  I struggled up and she walked off and stood by her parlour door. She pointed in. I took the hint. I shambled past her into her room. Her dazzling room. Nothing prepares the eye for this much red. Crimson dragons, scarlet cushions, cherry curtains, carmine couch, coral chairs. A room to please a vampire.

  “You stink, Danny! Don’t you sit on my best sofa.” She picked up a paper from the huge pile behind the door and spread it out on her couch and then indicated I could take a seat.

  I took my coat and hat off and slung them on the floor. I sat down and saw her face crease in pity for me. Was I in such a me
ss?

  “Second thoughts. No sit. Stand and take off all clothes. You need bath! I got a business to run and don’ need stinky men about place.”

  Her tone brooked no opposition but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to stand up and struggle out of my clothes. Mary had ducked into the hall and was shouting up the stairs.

  “Colette, get you lazy fat ass down here! We got smelly customer need bath!”

  She turned back to me and saw me struggling. “OK, big baby. You need mama take your clothes off.” She didn’t wait to discuss it, just started in on me with expert fingers. “What you worried ‘bout, big baby? You think I no seen bare man before? Iseen plenty bare man.” She pushed me back on the paper and wrenched my trousers, socks and pants off and threw them in a heap along with suit jacket, shirt and vest.

  She left me sitting, too drained to be embarrassed by my nudity, while she rummaged in a cupboard. “Put on.” She flung me a huge dressing gown in ruby-red satin.

  “Was he a sumo wrestler, Mary?” The dressing gown reached to the floor when I had it on.

  “Just big man, Danny. Very big!” Her little face crinkled and she guffawed at a memory I was glad not to share. “Now, first you have bath and shave, then food, then you talk. What you say?”

  I say thank you, thank you, let me light some incense in homage to your gods, Mary, because mine doesn’t listen. Or if he does, he’s a bloody sadist.

  Mary and Colette made me sit in the steaming tin bath while they added kettle after kettle of hot water. They fed me rice and sweet chicken and tea. Mary shaved me while Colette soaped me down. Bliss. I felt better than in weeks. Colette left us and I lay back wanting desperately to sleep and let the world go to hang.

  “Now, Danny. You talk.”

  She slopped water on my face. I talked. I told her everything and she interrupted for more details of how I turned the tables at Kate’s house and how I got away from the police. Mary kept darting to her feet and bringing out old newspapers from the bundle by the door to check what I was saying against the public comments. The pile of soggy newsprint grew. It was a long and complicated story. I wasn’t sure it made complete sense, or that she was taking it all in. I was wrong.

  “You sure you gave gun back?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing seems real. Maybe I did keep it and used it to threaten that girl. Then I killed her.”

  The jumble in my head could be read any way you like. I tried to think of myself in the witness box defending myself. It wasn’t a pretty thought: I think so, your honour, I’m not sure, your honour, I can’t remember, your honour, and so on until the jury was so convinced I was lying that they’d hardly have time for their first cup of tea before they were back with a guilty verdict.

  “I no think that.”

  “Why?”

  “You no killer. I seen plenty killers. Can tell a man by how he is with girl. My girls say you kind. They want mummy you.”

  No rosettes for my tigerish bedroom performance then. But I could have reached out and kissed Mary for that vote of confidence. I splashed water on my face to mask the tears that had sprung up.

  She was shaking her head. “But big mistake, big mistake give gun back.”

  “I should have wiped it at least.”

  She nodded. She knew the trade. I forced my addled brain to think. A strand of excitement floated up from the murk. It grew as I worked through the implications of the newspaper report. This could be the first real mistake by the killer. If I had given the gun back at Kate’s place, it meant that it was planted next to the last girl’s body. Planted either by the murderer himself or by someone who knew him.

  “The question is, how did the gun get to the murder site?”

  Mary was nodding furiously. She was way ahead of me. “Caldwell he give big fat bastard gun. He plant gun.”

  “Possible. But how does Caldwell know Wilson? And then there’s the question of timing. When did the gun get planted? At the time of the murder or after?”

  “Could be strange man around. Doing all killing. And big fat bastard want you to swing.”

  I fingered my neck. “The coincidences are piling up, Mary. Especially this last one: I ditch a gun with my prints on it the same night a woman is murdered. And the gun is magically whisked from Caldwell’s hands to Wilson’s and into the murder scene? No. I think I’ve already met the killer.”

  “I think too. Sounds like you know three men who might got blood on their hands.” She raised her tiny hand and stuck three fingers in the air.

  “Who’s the first Mary?”

  “Why, you, Danny.” She pulled down one finger.

  “I thought you said…”

  “I no think that. But maybe you have a devil inside that come out sometime.”

  I stared at her for a while, and believed in devils for a moment. “Maybe, Mary. Maybe. OK, who’s next?”

  She lowered the next finger. “Mr big fat bastard…”

  She was right. I’d half-jokingly thought Wilson had all the attributes of a murderer. He was vicious, violent and liked hurting good-time girls who could hardly turn to the police for protection. Was that why he wanted me off the scene? The last thing he’d need was a freelancer blundering around. No one inside the force would ever suspect that the DI in charge of the hunt was the killer. He was a suspect. But not my prime one. The one I could scarcely believe. Rule out nothing, suspect everyone, check everything until you have hard proof. Those were my rules.

  “He could be, Mary. Caldwell gives him the gun, Wilson kills another girl and leaves the gun with my prints on it. But if Wilson was the killer, how would Caldwell know that? And why would Wilson risk him knowing that?”

  “So it Caldwell.” She dropped the last finger.

  “That’s my hunch. Caldwell planted the gun with my prints on it at the site of the last murder. Caldwell is the killer.”

  The detective in me – and Val’s and now Mary’s faith in me – made me cling to Wilson or Caldwell being the killer. Maybe in cahoots with each other. Tony Caldwell’s final betrayal of me. Maybe – despite my dream - he’d killed Lili in France; he’d known I was due to see her and set the Gestapo on me. Maybe he’d framed me by planting the incriminating gun on the latest victim.

  What was I to believe? And who would other people believe? A CID Inspector and a decorated Army Major, or a man with a hole in his head? I could feel the noose tightening already. My brain seemed to have become paralysed.

  “You get dry. Get sleep. We talk later.”

  I did as I was told. At least, I lay on the tiny bed she gave me in a spare room and stared at the ceiling. So many fragments swirling around. It reminded me of the time I got so drunk that I had vertigo lying down. Yet in the debris of my life at this moment, a little Chinese woman had given me hope, just by believing in me.

  Maybe that slender lifeline opened a channel in my brain, for I began to wake in the morning grasping desperately at the tendrils of a dream. The familiar one, but this time there was more. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to project it on to my lids. I got a purchase on it and hauled it in, reel by reel, to inspect it with my conscious mind. I lay as still as a corpse. It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory of that night in Avignon. A complete memory.

  The clock is striking eight and I’m walking fast down the back lanes towards the safe house. I feel the familiar knot of fear and excitement in my stomach as I choose streets which I hope aren’t being patrolled. I have good papers on me and my French will stand up to simple interrogation from the Germans, though not from a Vichy militia-man.

  We have a drop coming in tonight and I need to make sure everything has been set up for it. The last load was blown completely off course and landed in the town. It was a race across the backyards of the suburbs in the dark; we lost, and twenty Sten guns and ammo ended up in the arsenal of the Gestapo. I am determined not to lose this consignment. We have a better system of flares and I’ve doubled the number of Maquis ready to pounce on the crates.

&
nbsp; We’ve mustered nearly thirty bicycles and one truck – Gregor’s. Perhaps more importantly, the weather is with us; a soft spring evening, a gentle breeze and clear skies. Perfect. And it has to be; I’m determined to impress Major Tony Caldwell who was dropped in by Lysander a week ago on an inspection tour of all the agents in the south west.

  My boots sound loud on the cobbles and the smell of wood fires salts the air. I feel good, alive, as though every part of me has been freshly oiled and polished. And I’m seeing Lili. On business. As quartermaster for the town’s Resistance forces Lili has no time for romantic liaisons even if she did fancy me. We’re finalising the plans for tonight’s drop. She took her nom de guerre from the song we’re all humming or hearing – Nazis or Allies – on the radio stations. A funny business at times, war.

  I cross the last street and head down a little alley. A path leads off it to the right. The path twists and turns at the foot of the back gardens of the neat row of houses. A fence follows the path. About halfway along is the garden door into the safe house. I turn one last corner and am almost at the door when I glimpse a figure moving away from me. The retreating walk seems familiar, a loping stride, but I can’t place it.

  I walk fast past the back door; it’s slightly ajar. I quicken my pace to a jog, but when next I have a clear view, the figure has gone. Up ahead I can hear running footsteps heading away from me.

  I stop, turn back and go through the gate. It’s a short garden leading to the kitchen door. There don’t seem to be any lights on. Perhaps Lili’s being over-cautious. I get to the door and I’m about to knock when I notice it’s open a fraction. I push and go into the dark kitchen. There’s a smell of soup from a big pot on the range. Lili promised me dinner. I sniff the air and think it’s caught. I turn the gas off.

  I let my eyes adjust until I can see where the hall is. I walk on into the hall and there for the first time, call out softly for Lili. There’s no reply. I call again. Nothing.

  I find the light switch in the hall. I walk into the tiny sitting room and see a table laid for a meal; fresh bread and two places: me and Lili. I back out of the room feeling something is wrong, very wrong. The floorboards groan as I slowly take the stairs. I call her name again as I round the corner and emerge on the landing.