by Mike Hollow
Cradock was glad to get away from Whitwell Road. He strode along briskly, and within little more than five minutes he was ringing the bell beside Cooper’s front door. The contrast with where he had just come from was striking. Cooper’s residence was a three-storey Victorian house, somewhat more substantial than most others in the area. It had a porch, sash windows, and a small front garden with steps down to a basement, and it looked well maintained. Not the kind of place Cradock could aspire to on what he earned.
The door opened, and he saw a large figure scowling down at him from the doorstep.
“Mr Frederick Cooper?”
“What if it is?” growled the man.
Cradock produced his warrant card and identity card.
“I’m Detective Constable Cradock. I’d like to have a brief word with you.”
“Would you, indeed? You’d better come in then,” said the man, opening the door wide and motioning Cradock in. Halfway down the light and spacious hallway he stopped and turned round to face Cradock; this was clearly as far as his hospitality extended. He was a young man, about the same age as Cradock himself, if not younger. He was wearing an expensive-looking suit, generously cut in the pre-war style, with turn-ups on the trousers and wide lapels. Judging by first impressions, thought Cradock, the man’s manner was not as refined as his dress.
“So you are Mr Frederick Cooper?”
“Course I am. Who did you expect?”
Cradock decided to ignore the sarcasm.
“I’m making enquiries in connection with the death of Mr Charles Villiers last Saturday evening. Did you know Mr Villiers?”
“Never heard of him.”
“The reason why I’m here is that on Saturday evening an air-raid warden saw Mr Villiers backing his van into your premises on Whitwell Road. Perhaps that might help you to remember.”
Cooper stroked his jaw.
“Ah, yes, I think I recall now. Must have slipped my memory. He was the bloke from the printer’s, wasn’t he? I couldn’t remember his name when you first said it. You say he’s dead?”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, he wasn’t dead when he left me. I can assure you of that. Got caught in the air raid, did he?”
Cradock ignored the question.
“Can you tell me what Mr Villiers was doing at your premises?”
“Yes, he came over to talk to me.”
“About what?”
“He was going to print some stationery for me, wasn’t he? For my business. He said he’d come and discuss it. Probably because I was a new customer, I suppose.”
“So he wasn’t delivering anything to you?”
“No, just visiting.”
“And yet he backed his van into your yard rather than leaving it on the street. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he thought it was a rough area. Maybe he thought your lot would immobilize it, nick the rotor arm so the Germans couldn’t use it to invade East Ham or something. Who knows? I didn’t ask him.”
“And what is your business, Mr Cooper?”
“I’m a trader. I buy and sell. You know, a bit of this and a bit of that.”
“Can you be more precise?”
“Well, clothes mainly. Gents’ and ladies’, but mostly ladies’.”
“You have a shop?”
“No, that’s too complicated for my liking. I buy most of it in from workshops down in Whitechapel and Mile End and I sell them mainly in Queen’s Road Market. You know the place? Off Green Street, just by Upton Park station. Maybe I could fix you up with something for the missus.”
“Thank you, but no.”
“Single man, eh?”
Again Cradock forced himself to ignore the remark. The man seemed to be getting pleasure from trying to provoke him.
Cooper flashed him an unconvincing smile.
“Don’t worry, it’s all legit. A public service, really. People still need clothes, even in a war, especially the ladies. And there’s rumours going round that we might be getting clothes rationing, same as with the food, so business is booming – air raids permitting, of course. High quality for low prices, that’s my motto.”
“What do you use the place in Whitwell Road for?”
“Storing stuff, mainly. All the clothes and suchlike, anything else I might be selling. You got a problem with that?”
“No, Mr Cooper. As I said, I’m investigating the death of Mr Villiers, not your market stall. You may be the last person who saw him alive. You said he left your premises; what time was that?”
“I couldn’t say precisely, but I reckon it was about a quarter to nine, something like that. I remember thinking he was stupid to chance it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the sirens had gone off a bit before, and I was all for sitting tight, but he said something like he’d been through a lot of shellfire in his time and he wasn’t going to let an air raid stop him. I reckon he was an old soldier – he certainly talked like a major-general. Probably just a jumped-up corporal with ideas above his station.”
“So you didn’t go with him?”
“Not a chance, mate. Heroics is for fools, if you ask me.”
“Can anyone confirm that you stayed there?”
“No such luck. I was on my own all night.”
A cold expression formed on Cooper’s face.
“Now, is that enough for you? I think that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject, so if you don’t mind, I shall bid you good day, officer.”
“That will be all for now, thank you,” said Cradock, folding away his notebook. “If there’s anything else I need to know, I’ll be back.”
“Any time, my son, any time,” said Cooper, and steered him towards the door.
CHAPTER 15
The wheels clicked rhythmically across the rail joints as the train swayed and rattled its way eastwards from Stratford through the dense housing of East London. Jago leaned his shoulder against the window and watched as terrace after terrace of drab, soot-blackened dwellings slipped past. He was feeling drowsy after three nights of interrupted sleep. The sight of a hoarding on the side of a pub advertising Johnnie Walker whisky reminded him to tell Cradock to check up on Gray this evening, and then within seconds he dozed off. The next thing he knew, the train was lurching violently as it crossed a set of points, banging his head against the glass. He awoke to see a brief interval of green fields appearing beside the track, with a view of open countryside beyond.
Minutes later the train crawled into the station and laboured to a halt in a screeching and squealing of brakes. A few people got off, leaving the carriage almost deserted. Jago stood up, pulled down the window and breathed in deeply to clear his head. He chuckled to himself.
“A penny for them, guv’nor?” said Cradock, as Jago turned back and settled back into his seat.
“What’s that?”
“Your thoughts, sir. A penny for your thoughts.”
“Oh, I see. I was just thinking. It’s nearly three months now since the government said all the signposts had to be removed.”
“So the Germans wouldn’t know where they were when they landed?”
“Yes. So here we are: we’ve arrived at the station, but no signs anywhere. There’s no Germans here, but it means we’ve got no idea where we are either.”
“Very confusing.”
“An ingenious idea, no doubt, but you’ve only got to stick your nose out of the window to know exactly where we are. We must be in Romford.”
“How’s that then, sir?”
“Because the air stinks of hops and malt. The brewery’s only a quarter of a mile down the road, in the middle of the town, and they’re always doing something there that makes that smell. We just have to hope the Germans don’t know that.”
Cradock went to the window and sampled the air. Jago was right: the town did have a very distinctive odour.
“But back to the job in hand,” said Jago. “We need to find out a bit a
bout the dead man’s brother, see if he can tell us anything useful about the deceased. When we get there, I’d like you to do the talking this time. I’ll just listen and watch.”
“Very good, guv’nor,” said Cradock.
The sound of doors slamming along the length of the train signalled that it was about to depart, so he pushed the window up again and sat down.
They were now only three stops from Brentwood. Within half an hour they were knocking on the door of Major Arthur Villiers.
Jago surveyed the garden as he waited for the knock to be answered. A straight path led from the wrought iron gate, flanked on each side by a single neat rectangle of closely trimmed grass. He noted that he could see none of the moss or dandelions that bedevilled his own small patch. The lawns were separated from the path by beds of geometrically aligned ranks of plants and shrubs, and on one side the grass extended round the side of the house as far as a high fence that guarded access to the rear of the property. Jago suspected that it was money for a gardener rather than a consuming hobby that kept it all so thoroughly under control.
The door was opened by a middle-aged woman in a dark blue dress covered by a grey paisley-patterned apron. Before Jago could speak, a man appeared behind her.
“Thank you, Mrs Wilson. I’m expecting these gentlemen.”
She gave a polite nod towards the two men on the doorstep and retired into the depths of the house.
“That’s Mrs Wilson: she keeps house for me. Doesn’t live in, just comes in three times a week to keep everything shipshape and Bristol fashion, as they say in the Navy. Looks after the laundry and does a little cooking. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”
At first glance the man at the door was rather as Jago had expected: fiftyish, about five foot nine, and a little overweight. He was wearing a green tweed suit and brown brogues, his right hand cupping the bowl of a briar pipe. His manner was bluff and hearty, but there was something about it that struck Jago as not quite convincing.
“We appreciate your sparing this time to see us, Major Villiers,” he said.
“Not at all,” said the major, switching his pipe to his left hand in order to shake hands with the two policemen. He waved them in with a sweep of his pipe stem, and led them to a sunny drawing room at the back of the house. The smell of aromatic tobacco smoke that filled the house reminded Jago of his father.
“First of all may I express my condolences on the loss of your brother,” he said.
“That’s most kind of you, Inspector,” said Villiers. “My brother and I may not have seen eye to eye on everything, but he was nevertheless my brother, and it’s a hard loss.”
“I understand,” said Jago. “This is my colleague Detective Constable Cradock. If you don’t mind, he has just a few questions for you.”
Villiers turned to Cradock, drew himself up and looked him in the eye. “Very well, Constable, carry on.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cradock began. “Very nice place you have here. It’s a pleasant change to be out in the country after all the bombing we’ve had down our way. I expect it’s a bit quieter here.”
“We’re all on the front line now, Detective Constable.”
“Of course. Am I right in believing you’re involved in the Home Guard?”
“Yes, that’s correct. When I heard the announcement in May that the Local Defence Volunteers were to be set up I thought it was an opportunity for me to be useful.” He crossed the room to the French windows and gazed out into the garden. “I came out of the last war as a major, so I have some military experience, and I’m retired now, so I have the time.”
He turned back to face them, his hands clasped behind his back.
You look a bit young to be retired, thought Jago, especially for a solicitor: I wonder why you’re no longer practising. It was a point Cradock should have picked up, but Jago was reluctant to interrupt the interview. His assistant, meanwhile, ploughed on.
“Your brother’s wife told us you command the Home Guard in Brentwood.”
“Not exactly,” said Villiers with a smile. “I’m merely a company commander, responsible for part of the Brentwood volunteers. My sister-in-law probably thinks my role is more important than it is. She’s very sweet like that, but you can’t expect a woman to take an interest in the niceties of military command structures.”
“Happier in the kitchen, eh?” said Cradock.
Villiers’ expression clouded. He stalked across the room and swung back to glare at Cradock as if he were inspecting a sloppily turned-out private on parade.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Constable,” he said. “That’s not what I mean at all. Mrs Villiers is no fool. She’s a very fine woman and I have the utmost respect for her. She’s not had an easy life, and after what she’s had to put up with I wouldn’t be surprised if military affairs were of no further interest to her at all.”
“But her husband had a military background, didn’t he? Are you saying that he was what she had to put up with?”
The major calmed a little before speaking again.
“All I’m saying is that I think my brother was a disappointment to her. If you want my honest opinion, I’d say I believe that when she married him, she thought she was getting an officer and a gentleman for a husband, but all she got was an officer.”
“So you’re suggesting he wasn’t all he appeared to be?”
“I’ll be frank with you, Constable. I didn’t get on with my brother. I’m sorry that he’s been killed, but he and I haven’t been close since we were young men. I haven’t seen him for several years, and I’m not sure there’s a lot I can say to help you.”
“It would help me to know what caused the estrangement between you.”
“If you must know, it was to do with the war. The last one, I mean. My brother liked people to know that he’d been a captain in the Army, and it’s true that he was, but there were times when I couldn’t agree with the way he conducted himself. As far as I was concerned, he simply wasn’t playing the game.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“Well, as it happened, the whole business came to a head over one particular incident. He hadn’t broken King’s Regulations or done anything illegal, but I could not condone what he’d done.”
“Could you explain a little more, sir?”
“I don’t really want to go into details. Speaking ill of the dead and all that, you know.”
“I understand that, Major Villiers, but it would help us to know what kind of man he was.”
“Very well, if you insist. It came up in a conversation we had just after the war. My brother and I were together one evening, reminiscing about it all. We got onto the subject of discipline at the front. I’m sorry to say not all the men were everything we would have wanted them to be and it was sometimes the devil of a job to get them over the top under fire. He mentioned quite casually that he’d shot a man for cowardice, and I’m afraid we got into quite an argument about it.”
“Why was that?”
“You look far too young to have been in the Great War,” said Villiers, “but if you had been at the front you’d know it was a very difficult time, and discipline had to be maintained. Perhaps you were there, Mr Jago?”
He looked across the room to Jago, who nodded slowly.
The major continued.
“In those days a soldier convicted on a charge of cowardice would be shot at dawn, with no right of appeal. But the fact is, many of these men were shell-shocked. They should have been in a hospital, not a trench. Some of them had volunteered for service under age and shouldn’t even have been there.”
He turned to Jago again.
“You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Jago. “We all had to find our own ways of coping, and some of the men just couldn’t.”
“Nowadays it wouldn’t happen: they’d be imprisoned, not shot. But back then it was a different story.”
“I see, sir,” said Cradock. “And what
was it you and your brother disagreed about?”
“In the case that he mentioned, the accused was still alive after the firing squad had done its work,” Villiers continued, his voice tense. “My brother finished him off with his revolver. That was his duty. In any case he was a strict disciplinarian and would have had no qualms about it. But what I found repellent was that he seemed to have almost enjoyed it: he thought the man deserved his sentence and it was a jolly good show. We had quite a row about it, and after that we just didn’t see each other. I thought he was cruel and proud of it, and that’s why I broke with him.”
Major Villiers paused, and then spoke to Cradock again, this time more quietly.
“You know, Constable, I’ve often thought about the life that poor young soldier never had and the one my brother’s enjoyed since then. And I’ve also wondered how many other lives he may have ruined since then, who else may have suffered at his hands. It’s always seemed to me a great foolishness that a man with his temperament should have been appointed a magistrate.”
CHAPTER 16
Albert Johnson knocked on Gray’s door. There had been no daylight bombing today, and the air-raid sirens had remained silent as the light began to fade, so people were venturing out onto the street. A pair of women in coats and headscarves walked by, and he noticed one of them glancing up at the sky as if fearful of aeroplanes approaching. He heard the sound of feet stumping down the staircase behind the door, and then a fumbling with the lock on the inside. It opened, and there was Bob Gray.
He looked a little unsteady, and he held a glass tumbler in his hand.
“Come in,” he said, waving Albert in, and backed up against the wall to let him pass. Albert heard the front door slam behind him as he made his way up the narrow stairs, then a second sequence of creaks joined the ones his own feet were making on the worn wooden treads. Gray was making his way up the steps at his own pace.