by Robert Gott
‘This man will kill you one day,’ Joe said to Mary.
‘He has no pity,’ she said. ‘It’s one of things I love about him.’
Jones lifted his shirt and smiled at her.
‘Argument 7,’ he said, and ran his hand across his belly.
‘You can’t spell,’ Joe said.
‘The cunt who tattooed me can’t spell. He’s making spelling mistakes in Hell now.’
Mary sighed dramatically.
‘Maybe it’s time we put Tom out of his misery,’ she said.
Jones’s eyes flicked towards Tom’s slumped body.
‘I can do a lot more to him. I’ve hardly started.’
‘All right. Get some cold water and see if you can wake him. There’s probably a bit of life left in him. Sergeant Sable here hasn’t seen you at work.’
‘Sergeant Sable is a flea.’
Jones went to get some water, whereupon Joe began struggling vigorously against his bonds, and fell sideways on the floor. His face hit the ground hard.
‘Don’t struggle, Sergeant — it makes you look silly.’
She prodded him in the ribs with her foot, and then, rather tentatively, kicked him. Having enjoyed that, she delivered a sickening kick to his ribs.
‘Preparing for married life with Jones?’ he gasped.
‘Ho ho. Gallows humour. The brave Jew. That won’t last long.’
Jones returned with a bucket of water and poured it over Tom Mackenzie. He woke, his eyes dazed with shock and pain. He saw Joe for the first time, and his mouth formed his name.
Jones righted Joe’s chair and moved it closer to Tom’s. Their knees were touching. He produced a cut-throat razor and a small hunting knife, and handed the razor to Mary. She looked uncertain, but turned the razor over in her hands and gingerly felt its edge.
‘Goodness, that is sharp,’ she said. ‘These things are dangerous, aren’t they?’
‘Cut off his cock,’ Jones said blandly.
Mary looked from Tom to Joe.
‘Which one?’
‘Start with him,’ Jones said, and pointed with his thumb at Tom.
Joe averted his eyes from Tom’s face, not wanting to know for certain if he was aware of what was happening. He looked at Mary Quinn and searched her face for a sign that this was just an elaborate form of psychological torture. Her expression was one of girlish glee and faux timidity.
‘What do I do?’ As she asked this, she reached down between Tom’s legs. ‘Will it just come off?’
‘Pull on it, stretch it out, and don’t saw at it. Slice it.’
She took Tom’s penis between her thumb and forefinger, and stretched it. Then she held the razor under it.
Joe roared with all the power he could muster, ‘Chafer! Goad! Lambert! Now! Now! Now! Now!’
Mary froze, and Ptolemy Jones turned his head sharply towards the door. Joe kept roaring, ‘Now! Now! Now!’ Mary withdrew the razor and stood back from Tom.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked nervously.
There was silence.
‘Nothing,’ Jones said. ‘It was a trick.’
‘Who were you calling out to?’ she shrieked at Joe.
The horrifying answer was no one. There was no one there for Joe to call out to. He knew that they were beyond help. He looked at Tom, and found himself wracked by sobs. It wasn’t craven weeping. It was grief — grief that burst from his knowledge that he had made all this happen. He had brought Tom to this place.
Jones felt no such remorse. Enraged by Joe’s tears and by the fact that Joe had momentarily duped him, Jones lunged at him and drove the small knife into his shoulder. To Joe, it felt like a punch, so that when Jones stepped away, Joe was surprised to see the knife’s hilt protruding from under his left collarbone. Amazingly, the blade was causing him only a dull ache, but when Jones grabbed the hilt and pulled the knife out, Joe felt a sharp, blinding pain. Even though he was dizzy, and everything seemed to be in slow motion, he saw that Jones was now holding the knife low and that he was about to push the blade up through Joe’s ribs. Jones swung his arm back, and Joe closed his eyes.
Afterwards, Joe couldn’t recall the exact sequence of events. There was a loud report, like a door slamming, that echoed around the room, and Ptolemy Jones crashed against Joe, knocking him backwards onto the floor. For the second time, his head hit it with some force. But this time, he slipped into the blessed refuge of unconsciousness.
Joe Sable woke in a bed with the smell of disinfectant in his nostrils. Inspector Titus Lambert and Constable Helen Lord were standing at the foot of the bed. Joe tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry.
‘Tom is safe, Joe,’ said Titus. ‘He’s in this hospital. He’s safe.’
Joe was confused and uncertain where he was.
‘You’re in a hospital, Joe. You’re safe, and Tom is safe.’
‘What did they do to him?’
Titus hesitated.
‘Jones worked him over, but he’s alive, and he’ll recover.’
‘What did they do to him?’ Titus’s hesitation distressed him.
‘Most of his fingers have been broken, and a couple of ribs. There are various burns on his body and deep slashes, his nose has been broken, and he’s got a nasty scald. The doctors say he’ll be fine, but he’ll be in a lot of pain for quite some time. You have a concussion and a fairly deep stab wound in your shoulder. We’ve been told you’ll make a full recovery.’
‘You may even be fit for work in a few days,’ Helen said. ‘Light office-duties only, of course.’
Joe couldn’t think clearly. There was something he needed to say to Helen, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
‘What day is it?’ he asked.
‘New Year’s Day,’ Helen said. ‘You had a big New Year’s Eve. Welcome to 1944.’
Helen’s tone was strangely neutral, as if she were struggling to keep stronger emotions under control.
‘Jones and Mary Quinn, where are they?’ Joe asked.
‘Ptolemy Jones is dead,’ Titus said. ‘Mary Quinn is in custody. She tried to cut her wrists with the razor. We stopped her.’
‘Why?’
It was a simple question, but Joe fell back into an exhausted sleep before Titus could answer him.
Four hours later, Joe sat propped up in bed. He was coherent and alert, and he’d already told Inspector Lambert, Tom Chafer, and Dick Goad as much as he could remember.
‘Mary Quinn is insane,’ he said. ‘Hatred made her insane.’
‘No,’ Titus said. ‘Hatred doesn’t make you insane. You have to be insane to begin with. She was in love with Ptolemy Jones. At least, that’s how she’d describe her feelings, I suppose, although nothing about that relationship resembles what I understand by love. Whatever fuelled their mutual attraction would take psychiatric expertise to uncover.’
‘They were strange together. I’ve never been so close to something so completely incomprehensible to me. There was something fierce between them. Have you read The Turn of the Screw, sir?’
‘No. What is it?’
‘A novel by Henry James. There are two characters in it, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint. They’re dead. They appear as ghosts, but their relationship was so tortured and sordid when they were alive that it continued to corrupt the living. Jones and Mary Quinn were like that — sordid and corrupt. I can’t think of any other way to describe them. Mary seemed to be able to get Jones to do things for her, and yet she seemed as well to be wary of him. Or maybe I assumed that because I was afraid of him. And I was, sir — I was afraid of him. She told me how they met. It all started with violence. It was just by awful chance that they found each other.’
‘You’d have to plumb the depths of perversity to comprehend what they saw in each other, an
d I have no desire to do that. I’m happy just to call it a form of madness.’
‘How did you find us?’
Titus explained what he’d heard when Jones and Fred entered Joe’s flat, and how he’d immediately contacted Dick Goad. Goad had surmised that the Belgrave house was the most likely place for Jones to go to.
‘No one’s lived in it for years,’ Goad said, ‘but it was the only chance we had, so we took it. We got lucky.’
‘Did you hear me calling out?’
‘No. We knew you were in there because the car they stole to get to Belgrave was parked outside. We heard a woman scream something, and we moved in.’
‘Who shot Jones?’
‘I did,’ Tom Chafer said. ‘He was about to kill you.’
‘What will happen to Mary Quinn?’
Chafer closed his notebook.
‘Mary Quinn is an invaluable resource,’ he said. ‘We’re taking charge of her. What she has to tell us about Jones and his cronies is of national importance, and I’m afraid that trumps whatever claims Homicide might have on her. We’ll deal with Mitchell Magill and his mob, too, and we’ll find George Starling.’
‘Well, that’s all nicely tidied away isn’t it?’ Joe said.
‘Yes,’ Chafer said. ‘Intelligence is a tidy organisation.’
‘We don’t want any of this going through the courts, Sergeant. You must understand that nothing good would be served by having the general public know what happened here. Remember the hysteria that gripped this city when Private Leonski killed those women back in ’42? The press went to town — Jack the Ripper was on the loose, they said. When it turned out to be that Yank soldier, he was tried and executed with military efficiency, and that put an end to it. As I see it, that’s what we’re doing here — putting an end to it. Your murderer is dead, and his girlfriend is a Nazi sympathiser. We, not Homicide, deal with Nazi sympathisers. The last thing we want is newspapers screaming “Tattoo murder horror”. Lurid headlines won’t do any of us any good.’
Goad turned to Titus. ‘We’re treading on your toes, Inspector. I’m aware of that.’
Tom Chafer left the room as Dick Goad was talking.
‘The difference between Tom Chafer and me is that I’ll tread on your toes and then apologise. I’ll still tread on them, though.’
Titus considered this.
‘You’ll pass on to us anything you learn that might be pertinent to us?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
Both Titus and Joe knew that Goad was lying, and that Intelligence had no interest in tying up Homicide’s loose ends. They now had what they wanted — a live Nazi to play with. After the application of a little persuasion, she might be convinced to lead them to a traitors’ nest, if such a thing existed.
When Goad had left, Titus sat in the chair beside Joe’s bed, running his fingers through what was left of his hair.
‘Two men were shot dead last night in Constance Thorpe’s flat,’ he said. ‘There may be some connection with Jones and Mary Quinn. It’s too early to say — we don’t know yet who the bodies are. Constable Lord is interviewing Constance and Dora now. I gather these men claimed to be police, which is why Constance opened the door to them.
Titus looked exhausted.
‘I wish people would stop killing each other,’ he said.
At that moment, Maude Lambert came into Joe’s room. Her face was drawn, and her eyes were red from crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ Joe said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Without much conviction, it seemed to Joe, she said, ‘You have nothing to apologise for. None of this is your fault. Next you’ll be apologising for the siege of Stalingrad.’
‘How is he?’ Titus asked.
Maude began to cry.
‘He’s all broken, Titus. He’s all broken.’
Titus took her in his arms She leaned tightly into him to contain her shaking body, but when she calmed down she pulled away.
‘When he can, he’ll come home to us, won’t he, Titus? We’ll nurse him.’
‘Of course.’
Maude managed a weak smile, kissed Titus lightly on the lips, and left without saying goodbye to Joe. She hadn’t asked how he was feeling.
‘Give her time, Joe,’ Titus said. ‘This is all very raw.’
‘Constable Lord isn’t happy with me, either, but I can’t remember why not.’
‘Constable Lord feels excluded. She is an excellent detective. She is, however, a junior officer, and her inclusion at any level is at my discretion — not yours, and not hers. I’ll make this clear to her this afternoon when she briefs me on her interviews with Constance Thorpe and Dora Mansfield.’
‘Have they been arrested?’
‘No. They’re voluntarily at Russell Street.’
‘Are you satisfied, sir, that the Quinn and Draper murders have been solved?’
‘Yes. I’m satisfied that Jones did them, and I’m satisfied that he also killed the tattooist, but we stumbled through this investigation. It was solved by accident, not design. If Jones and Miss Quinn had been smarter, or if Jones hadn’t had such dangerous ambitions, I don’t think we would have solved it at all.’
‘In the end, though, don’t most investigations depend on the carelessness and stupidity of the perpetrators?’
‘I suppose that’s true. It’s a bit dispiriting, though, to think that that’s what we do — wait until the other person makes a mistake.’
‘We have to be close enough to them to take advantage of that mistake, don’t we, and smart enough to know when they’ve made it?’
Titus nodded and forced a smile.
‘We’ll need you back as soon as possible, Sergeant. Despite appearances to the contrary, Constable Lord would rather work with you at the moment than with me, and that suits me. You have a lot to learn from her.’
It took a moment for this last comment to register. By the time it had, Titus was at the door of the room.
‘I suppose we’ll never know now,’ he said, ‘if Mary Quinn had anything to do with the accident that killed her father’s mistress. Homicide is clearly not as tidy an organisation as Intelligence.’
When Titus had gone, Joe explored the extent of his injuries. Whatever painkiller he’d been given — and a general itchiness made him think it had been morphine — was beginning to wear off, and he was conscious of a swelling ache near his left shoulder. As far he could tell, there was nothing else wrong with him, and he swung his legs out of bed. Immediately, though, his bruised ribs announced themselves. He stood up and took a look in the mirror. What a mess. His face, still grazed from his fall, his black eye, and now his bandaged arm and shoulder made him look as though he’d fallen out of a high window.
He left his room and went in search of Tom Mackenzie. A nurse directed him to a room where he found Tom lying bandaged and plastered into immobility. His eyes were vacant with morphine, although he managed a dull expression of recognition. Joe understood what Maude had meant when she’d said that he was all broken. Perhaps it was the drugs, but Joe suspected it was more than that. The man in the bed was somehow absent. Conversation was impossible. Joe spoke as naturally as he could, as if the sight of Tom hadn’t shocked him. He told him what he supposed he’d already heard — that Jones was dead and that Mary Quinn was in the hands of Intelligence. Fred hadn’t been picked up yet; he hadn’t been at the Belgrave house. They’d get him, though. Sure as eggs.
Tom gave the smallest of nods, as if all this was of only the faintest interest to him. Joe was uncertain, in fact, if Tom had heard a word that he’d said.
In the corridor outside Tom’s room, Joe met the doctor who was treating him.
‘Is he going to be all right? I mean, is he going to get back to normal?’
‘Do you want the truth, or a comf
orting lie?’
‘The truth.’
‘He’s suffered a great trauma. We don’t know exactly what was done to him, but it’s probable that he’ll show signs of a kind of shell-shock for some time to come. He’s going to need a lot of help. His physical injuries aren’t life-threatening, and I can treat them. But I’m not a psychiatrist, and he’s going to need one. I’m sorry.’
Joe thanked him for his honesty. He knew that Maude Lambert had been right to slight him. Things would never be the same between them again, because one or both of them would always be pretending that everything that had happened had just been part of the job, and that that made it all right.
The job. Joe leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. No one would be able to persuade him that he’d done a good job. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for it. What had happened here was nothing like what was happening in Europe, and still he felt overwhelmed by the challenges, unequal to them. He felt … what? Changed, certainly, but more than that — damaged. He opened his eyes. He didn’t feel less naïve, more mature, tougher. He just felt damaged. Could he really go back to work as if all that was wrong with him was a few bruises and a stab wound? He’d thought that finding the person who’d murdered the Quinns and Sheila Draper would make some kind of difference …
At precisely this moment, Tom Mackenzie uttered a small groan, and Joe’s stomach twisted.
Joe probably shouldn’t have shown up for work on Monday morning. He’d wrestled with a strong desire to tender his resignation. Inspector Lambert had told him to take all the time he needed, but he didn’t need time; what he needed, he’d realised, was distraction. Helen Lord was sitting at Joe’s desk, looking through papers. When she saw him, she made to stand up, but changed her mind.
‘We weren’t expecting you for a few more days,’ she said. ‘You look like you’ve been hit by a tram.’
‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking.’
‘I assumed you were fine, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Why are you mad at me?’
‘You doubted me.’