‘Yes,’ said Eve. ‘I’ll have to look into it. I’d better go, Thank you for talking to me, you’ve been very helpful. Goodbye Patricia.’
In a flurry of bag and gas mask Eve rushed from the ward, remembering at the last minute to leave the posy of flowers behind. She did not think it would be a good idea to confront David Kydd again alone, so she set out to find Charlie, as she felt she needed some sort of a bodyguard. It seemed ludicrous that such a scrawny, injured young man could be a dangerous murderer, but she shouldn’t take any chances. Inspector Reed would expect it, anyway.
She finally ran Charlie to earth in the most unlikely of places. He was helping out at the Blomfontein Road Swimming Baths, transferring bodies from an ambulance into the temporary morgue.
‘Good God, Charlie! What are you doing here?’
‘Just doing my bit, Evie. There was a fair few casualties last night. It’s getting a bit crowded in there and I’ve got to organise the relatives to identify them before we can release them for burial, poor buggers.’
‘Isn’t that up to the Coroner?’
‘Yeah. It would be normally, but there’s too many of them, he’s horribly overworked. I’m just lending a hand.’
‘Charlie, I need your help too.’
‘Righto, titch. I’ll tell them I’m leaving. I could do with a break. The smell in there gets to you after a bit. Wait here, I’ll see you in a mo.’
Eve loved the way Charlie always dropped whatever he was doing whenever she needed him. She couldn’t have a better friend.
When Charlie returned to her side she explained about her visit to the hospital and meeting Patricia, and what she had told her.
‘But I don’t get why they called him Billy,’ said Charlie.
‘Don’t you see? It’s a nickname. It’s because his surname’s Kydd. If it had been Cassidy they’d call him Hopalong. The kids were all mad about cowboys, same as we were.’
‘Oh, I get it. So this chap David Kydd is called Billy. So what? Why would he want to kill Malcolm Miller, Miss Broadbent and knock out this Amy girl?’
‘That, my friend, is what we are going to go and find out.’
Chapter Fourteen
Charlie wouldn’t let Eve visit David Kydd’s house until they had reported to the police station.
‘We can’t just walk into the house of what might be a very dangerous criminal without telling someone in authority where we are,’ he said.
Unfortunately Inspector Reed was not on duty and the Sunday skeleton staff seemed to have little knowledge or interest in the two murders that Eve was involved with.
‘All right,’ said the Duty Sergeant, sipping from his mug of hot tea and dunking a Garibaldi biscuit in it. ‘How old did you say this chap is? 21? And he’s wounded, you say. I should think you two would be able to handle him. If you get into any trouble just scarper and blow your whistle, Miss Duncan. We’ll come and sort it out.’ He smirked complacently and Eve tensed, ready to argue with him until Charlie nudged her leg with his boot. Eve glanced at him and he inclined his head towards the door.
‘Come on, Evie, let’s go. I don’t expect he’ll be any trouble.’
When they were outside on the pavement Eve protested, ‘He doesn’t seem to be taking this very seriously. We may have found the murderer of two people and he doesn’t care. It may be very dangerous.’
‘Well hanging around arguing with him isn’t going to make him change his mind. Come on Eve, let’s get on with it.’ Charlie took her arm and led her towards David Kidd’s house.
They had not advanced far up the road when Eve saw a thin, shambling figure in the distance. The boy wore a long khaki greatcoat and a balaclava covered his head, to mask his scar, Eve supposed. His limp was pronounced as he hurried along and the hem of the coat caught in his heels.
‘Look, Charlie, that’s him. He must have decided to go out for once. Let’s catch up with him.’
The pair gathered speed and followed the young man at a distance of about fifty yards. He never turned around to see if anyone was following and probably had no reason to think that they were. Soon he turned left into a quiet cul-de-sac dominated by the ruins of a bombed out church. The skeleton of the building was silhouetted against the bright blue morning sky and the lower parts of the demolished edifice were softened by a jungle of weeds that had sprung up in the months since the devastating explosion that had destroyed it. The vegetation had spread so that it was difficult to see where the ruined church ended and the overgrown graveyard behind it began.
Even though it was open to the elements the ruin had a claustrophobic atmosphere. All sounds of traffic from the main road were deadened and even the birds seemed to have abandoned this sad spot leaving it bereft of life. Eve, even as she crept forward with her new companion, fear, could not help thinking of the many weddings, christenings and funerals that would have been celebrated within these stricken walls. All those memories obliterated by a brutal wave of violence from the skies.
David Kydd stumbled and tottered amongst the debris, clutching at the top of a wall here, a thin sapling there. Eve and Charlie followed him, trying not to make any noise, but inevitably failing. It did not take long for Kydd to notice them. He swung round, an aggressive expression of terror and anger contorting his face, making the livid scar stand out more than ever.
‘Why are you following me? What do you want?’
‘I need to talk to you, Billy,’ said Eve, wondering why the boy had come to this hidden spot.
‘Who’s Billy? My name’s David. David Kydd. Haven’t you talked to me enough already?’
Eve suddenly realised what all this was about.
‘Your friends call you Billy. Didn’t you know that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re not David Kydd are you? You’re someone else. What is your name?’
‘Of course I am,’ the boy blustered. ‘David Kydd’s my name. I can show you my ID card if you like.’
‘I’m sure you’ve got an ID card. But I think you stole it from David.’
As she spoke Eve crept closer and closer to the young man and Charlie was slowly creeping round, over the rubble, trying to get behind him. The boy started to move backwards into what had once been a corner of the church, becoming more and more entrapped by the shattered masonry and the couple plaguing him.
Eve had crept to within reach of the imposter when he stretched out his arms and grabbed her to him. His surprisingly strong grip held Eve to his heaving chest with his left arm and, with the other, he pulled a long weapon out of the inside pocket of his overcoat and held it to Eve’s side in such a way that a slight thrust would have impaled her. Eve nearly collapsed with terror. Was she going to be another victim of this murderer? He had nothing to lose now.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ he yelled. Charlie froze. Eve trembled in the boy’s embrace, struck dumb, not able to take her eyes from the razor sharp edge of the bayonet pressing into her ribs.
Charlie raised his hands in the air. ‘All right, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming any closer, look, I’m moving away.’
Eve finally found her voice and she spoke clearly, without a quiver.
‘You’d better go away, Charlie. I’ll talk to David alone.’
‘He can’t go. He’ll bring someone back with him.’
‘You can’t stop him, David. You know this can only end one way.’ Eve spoke more confidently than she felt.
‘Yes, but you’ll be dead first.’
Charlie was scuttling through the rubble, well on his way back to the street.
‘Tell me what happened, David,’ said Eve, trying to keep her voice gentle and reassuring; not communicating her fear.
The boy’s grip on her relaxed imperceptibly, but he kept the bayonet aimed at her side, the point snagging on her shirt.
‘Why don’t we sit down?’ said Eve, slowly allowing her legs to fold under her until she was leaning against a low wall of bricks. The boy was forced to follow her
if he was to keep the knife in place and soon they were seated on the ground.
An incongruous sound came from the boy’s throat, somewhere between a groan and a sob. Eve realised that he had started to cry.
‘I never wanted this to happen,’ he began to wail. ‘But I can’t go back. I’d rather die than go back.’
‘Go back where?’
‘Where do you think? To the Front, to Egypt, to the fighting. I couldn’t stand another minute of it, not another second.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Eve repeated.
‘Davy died, you see. Right in front of me. He stood on a mine. Horribly mangled, blood everywhere, most of it over me. Most of the platoon died that day, or was wounded. One of them must’ve told them that Davy was dead and it was put in the records. So the medics came and took Davy’s body back to the place – the field hospital, then they took me. I’d swapped our tags; taken his ID. Swapped with Davy, you see, and said I was him. I’d been wounded too, my head and my guts. I was very sick for a while and then they sent me home, here. They thought it was me that was dead, killed by the mine in the sand.’
The boy paused, shaking his head as if he didn’t understand how it could all have gone so wrong. So I came here, to Davy’s home. He’d told me all about it and it sounded grand. I had nowhere else to go. I don’t have no home, no parents or nothing.’
‘I see,’ said Eve. ‘And then what happened?’
‘Well, this bloody milkman, Malcolm wasn’t it? He come to the door because he’d heard his friend David was home. But when he saw it was me he created the hell of a fuss and threatened to get me arrested for impersonation and all sorts. He thought I’d done Davy in to get his house, but I never, I just needed somewhere to stay for a bit, till I was better. The milkman was in the house and he’d left his horse and cart outside. I knocked him on the head with this walking stick in the hall,’ the boy said. ‘I knew I had to get rid of him so I carried him out to the milk float and put him on it. It was really early so there was no-one about to see.’
‘And you finished the round,’ said Eve.
A cunning smile flitted across his face. ‘Yeah, I thought I’d better finish the round or everyone would know where he’d disappeared. So I did the streets and left milk on doorsteps.’
‘But you didn’t know exactly which steps to leave it on, did you?’
‘No, course not. Anyways, then I saw this bombsite and thought if I left him there no-one would know what had happened to him. Might think he’d been killed in a raid. But when we got there he’d begun to come round from the bang on the head, so I stabbed him with this,’ he brandished the bayonet, ‘they taught us to do that. There was a lot of blood.’
Eve shuddered. She imagined David struggling with Malcolm over the rubble on the bombsite and then driving the bayonet into his partially conscious body.
‘Well,’ said Eve. ‘They might have thought he was killed in a raid, but that building was bombed months ago. We soon knew it was a murder.’
‘Murder? Is it murder?’ the boy looked as if he was going to cry again. ‘I just can’t go back to the front. I can’t!’
How deluded the boy was, thought Eve. He didn’t seem to realise what he had done.
‘Well, you won’t have to now,’ Eve said. ‘Not after this. What about Miss Broadbent? That poor old dear wouldn’t have done you any harm.’
‘She came to the house too. She’d heard Davy was back and wanted to help him. When she saw me and realised I wasn’t him, she got really angry and told me off like a little kid. I tried to explain, but she wasn’t having any of it, said she would report me to the authorities as a deserter and stormed off.’
‘So she had to die too?’
The boy hung his head in a show of remorse. ‘I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t have her telling no-one. They shoot deserters. I followed her to the park and did it there.’
Eve nodded in understanding, still feeling the sharp bayonet against her side. ‘But what about David’s parents? Wouldn’t they have come to see him eventually?’
‘Oh, no. He’d told me, they’d been killed in an air raid early on, with his sister. They were out somewhere in London. He had no-one now. That’s why the house was his.’
Eve muscles were beginning to cramp and a sharp stone was sticking into her backside. She adjusted her weight and the bayonet was clasped tighter and skimmed her skin, tearing the fabric of her shirt.
‘Don’t try anything or I’ll do you too.’
‘It’s all right, I’m not going anywhere. What about Amy Grainger? Why did you attack her?’
‘She came to the house looking for someone she called Billy. I thought she was in the wrong place, but then she realised I wasn’t him and rushed away, yelling her head off. I ran after her and didn’t catch up with her till the Uxbridge Road because of the crowds. I can’t move fast. I didn’t mean to hurt her but she struggled and fell, hit her head on the kerb. I wouldn’t have hurt her, she was expecting a baby.’
‘Still is,’ said Eve. ‘You’ll be glad to hear that she’s going to be all right. Now, what are you and me going to do? The police will be here soon. You do know you’re going to have to give yourself up, don’t you?’
Already she could hear the bell on the police car in the distance. Good old Charlie, he’d known what to do.
Tears poured down the young man’s face and his grip on the bayonet relaxed. Eve took it gently from his limp hand and threw it into the undergrowth. The police would find it later. That was probably why he had come to the church, to get rid of the blade, evidence of his crime. She stood over the shaking boy, held out a hand and pulled him to his feet.
In reality, Eve knew, he could have avoided all of this. He was not really a deserter. He could have gone back of his own accord at any time as he was entitled to a period of injury leave. The fact that he had taken another man’s identity could have been explained away by his shock and his own injuries. His crimes had come later when his fear of discovery had overcome him.
‘I can’t go back,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t let them make me.’
Eve knew there was little chance of that now; he was destined for a different fate. Charlie and several policemen were now stumbling over the remnants of the church. She drew the weeping, shaking lad towards her and held him. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for this poor damaged boy; another casualty of war. And she still didn’t know his name.
A Murder in the Country
Chapter One
Mud! Acres of stinking bloody mud.
Eve Duncan struggled to pull her wellington boot out of the mire that threatened to suck it from her foot. Her efforts almost caused her to topple over when her centre of gravity came perilously close to the tipping point. Her arms flailed at the damp air as she restored her precarious balance.
This mud wasn’t just plain old mud. It was sodden clay mingled with unspeakable farmyard substances that cloyed and stank, even though the farm in question was nearly half a mile away. The brutally sticky, stinking muck had wormed its way into every crevice after washing down the lane during the last week’s unstoppable rain.
Eve growled as she stomped through the field’s five-bar gate to catch up with the boys, only belatedly remembering to close it behind her when she spotted the cows gazing at her in hopeful anticipation. Even with the borrowed tweed hat she had pulled down over her ears she knew that her ginger curls would be an unmanageable frizz by the time she got home. Grumpiness threatened to overwhelm her. She’d always suspected that the countryside was overrated and this visit had done nothing to alter that opinion. You didn’t get this sticky, disgusting mess in Shepherds Bush.
In a fit of what she now perceived as misplaced generosity Eve had agreed to come and spend her leave in Little Barrington with her sister Grace. Frank Gibbon, her boss at the Censors’ Office at Mount Pleasant in London, had agreed that she was due for a break, not having had any proper leave since the end of 1939 when the war began, almost two years
ago now. You couldn’t exactly count her stints of helping the police with a couple of murder cases as holiday time. Even her police mentor, Inspector Reed, had reluctantly conceded that her work for him had been sufficiently distressing to entitle her to a paid holiday. Eve’s involvement in the discovery of several murdered bodies, and the subsequent search for their killers had, in their minds, clearly debilitated her delicate female spirit. Eve had in fact relished the challenge the cases posed and enjoyed her time as a part-time detective, but she wasn’t going to argue at the prospect of a few weeks in the country in summer, away from the horrors of the bombing in London.
‘Take as much time you need, a month if you like,’ the inspector said, with Mr Gibbon’s more reluctant agreement. ‘Your sister needs you and you’ll benefit from all that country air.’
She’d accepted the offer with delight; a break from wartime London would be wonderful. A proposal of a spell of freedom and rest would normally have suggested a stay at the seaside, usually in a homely boarding house. But since the outbreak of war the beaches of England were out of bounds to civilians, and certainly to holidaymakers. The shores were now seeded with anti-personnel mines and surrounded by barbed wire and concrete blocks to deter invading landing craft from delivering their payload of enemy soldiers. The authorities had made it as difficult as possible for the enemy to get a foothold on English soil, but their diligence had completely ruined the prospect of a summer’s traditional seaside break.
Just as Eve was contemplating the restricted options of where to go for her leave, she’d received a letter from her sister Grace, begging her to come to the country to help her out.
‘Please come, Evie. I’m expecting again and I can’t cope with the morning sickness and all these kids. They never seem to stop eating; all the cooking is killing me. And Hugh’s away at that headmasters’ conference in Yorkshire in August. I really need your help. Be a love and come and stay as soon as you can. You can bring Jake, he’ll love it here.’
Murders in the Blitz Page 18