Without Conscience

by David Stuart Davies

  He was more than happy. She might be a little naïve piece from the valleys, but when it came to sex, she knew all the right moves. Eventually, he reached his climax and slumped beside his new conquest on the bed.

  After a while, Rachel sat up. ‘I need the bathroom,’ she said quietly.

  Harryboy laughed. ‘Be my guest. It’s a free country – for the time being anyway. Then perhaps we can have another little love session, eh?’ He chuckled to himself.

  ‘Er … where can I … ?’

  ‘If you wan’ a pee, the lav’s down the corridor. I don’t advise you nip down like that. You’ll get yourself arrested. Either that or a job at the Windmill.’ He chuckled again at his own joke. ‘See if there’s a pot under the bed.’

  ‘I can’t – not in front of you.’

  ‘Cor blimey, now’s not the time to get precious. Not after what we’ve just been doing. I’m not curious, if that’s what you think. Just get on with it, woman.’

  His voice had taken on a darker, intimidating tone that unnerved Rachel. Reluctantly she extracted a metal bowl from under the bed. It was dusty and chipped. She turned her nose up at it.

  ‘Got all the mod cons ‘ere,’ grinned Harryboy, leering over the side of the bed at her.

  ‘You turn your back while I’ve finished. This is private.’

  With a laugh, he did what she asked.

  When she was finished and the pot stowed away out of view, she moved around to her side of the bed, her libido rising once more at the sight of her new friend lying naked on the bed, his penis not yet limp. He wasn’t a very tall chap but he was well put together with a good chest and some firm muscles and he certainly knew how to make love. Much more than Will did. The thought of that name, her old boyfriend from back home, made her flinch. She had told herself that she must forget it – now that she had a new life away from all that. She hadn’t realized how difficult it was going to be. Here was his name just popping into her mind without any warning, like a ghost coming to haunt her. It wasn’t going to be that easy to sever the ties with her past. It was waiting in the dark corners of her conscience ready to reach out and spoil her present pleasures. Suddenly, at the thought of this, she felt sick and unsteady on her legs. Her stomach lurched and she staggered backwards unsteadily, knocking into the chair by the dressing table. Harryboy’s jacket, which had been hanging there, slid to the ground. She waited a moment for her head to clear and then she bent down to retrieve the jacket. As she did so something dark and heavy fell out. It landed on the floor with a dull thud as it hit the thin carpet.

  It was a gun. A black, shiny pistol.

  Without thinking, she picked it up.

  Harryboy was off the bed in a flash and by her side. ‘Give that to me,’ he snapped. ‘Hand it over, quick.’ His voice was high-pitched, angry and threatening. Gone were the smiles and the cheery demeanour. Here was a demon.

  ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to …’ she stammered, unsure what she felt or meant to say.

  ‘Give me the fucking gun!’ he bellowed, his face glowing with anger.

  With a trembling hand she passed the pistol to him. Without a word, he slipped it back into his inside jacket pocket and then with the back of his hand he hit her hard, sending her spinning across the room. She crashed to the floor, banging her head on the door. So sudden and so violent had been the blow that it had squeezed all the breath out of Rachel and she lay there in shock gasping for air, unable to speak, moan or scream.

  ‘If I ever catch you touching my gun again, I’ll kill you. D’you understand? I will kill you.’ He walked over to her and knelt down, grabbing her hair from behind until he was able to pull her head backwards. He pushed his face close to hers so that all she could see were his cold, cruel blue eyes. ‘I said, do you understand?’ he growled in a fierce whisper, his spittle showering her face in a fine spray.

  ‘Yes, Harryboy, I understand. I’m sorry.’

  Without a word, he released her and she slumped back, her body limp with fear.

  ‘Right, get back on that bed. We have some unfinished business to perform.’

  Slowly, she picked herself up and climbed back on the bed, surreptitiously wiping the tears away with her arm.

  He came to her and kissed her nipples gently while he cupped each breast in turn. ‘Lovely tits,’ he murmured to himself rather than to her. It was as though the incident with the gun had never happened. Then he ran his hand down her belly until he reached the thicket of pubic hair. Here he began to arouse Rachel once more.

  Remarkably her body responded to his sensitive touch, her body gently rising and falling with the pleasure his fingers were generating, while her mind struggled with these sensations. How could she give herself to this man who had treated her so cruelly? She wanted to pull herself away. She wanted him to stop touching her, touching her in that way. But part of her didn’t want to; part of her was too frightened to try.

  It wasn’t very long before he entered her again and, as she surrended her body to the passion, she tried hard to forget the monster who had nearly knocked her senseless. But she couldn’t. She was reminded of it vividly each time his face came close to hers as he pumped rhythmically towards his climax.

  SIX

  I suppose I am a stranger to personal grief and bereavement. As an orphan, not having known my parents, I have never lost anyone who was very close and so I don’t really know how I will react when one day this happens to me. However, in my line of business, I’ve seen many times how grief affects others. From strange forms of self-denial to almost total collapse, there is a broad spectrum of emotion to tap into for those experiencing the loss. Somewhere in there is the angry and selfishly arrogant response. How dare God allow this to happen to me? How dare He make such a mess of my life? What’s going to happen to me now? This is specially tailored for the egocentric individual to whom the death of their nearest and dearest is an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. I thought Mrs Sandra Riley would slot very neatly into this category, but as things turned out, it wasn’t as simple as that.

  It was late afternoon when she came calling. I really hadn’t expected to see her again. She had paid my fee up front on our first meeting and now that her husband had been killed in rather embarrassing circumstances, I thought she would want to let the matter lie. What remained was a job for the police. There was no point stirring up the embers with me.

  But, not for the first time, I was wrong.

  The October day was already darkening and I had just drawn the blinds and turned on the lamps in my office when she arrived. She entered like a ship in full sail. There it was again, that heavily made-up face with a scarlet gash for a mouth and those arctic eyes staring at me with a mixture of anger and haughty disdain.

  ‘I fully expected to hear from you today, Mr Hawke,’ she said imperiously.

  ‘Would you like to take a seat, Mrs Riley?’ My response was civil but cool.

  She looked at the shabby padded chair before my desk as though something unpleasant had just died on it, but she took it all the same. ‘Well?’ she said expectantly, settling her capacious handbag on her lap as though it was some kind of leathery pet dog.

  ‘Please accept my condolences on the loss of your husband. I am sure the police will have explained the unfortunate circumstances of his death.’

  ‘The sordid details, you mean. Indeed. Apparently my husband was some sort of freak who achieved a kind of sexual thrill by dressing up as a woman.’

  ‘It was a foible of his,’ I said easily, lighting a cigarette. I was determined not to be intimidated by this heavily powdered gorgon. ‘At least you have the comfort of knowing that there was no other woman in the case. Your husband was not being unfaithful to you.’

  ‘Not in the usual way. I wish to God he had been seeing some tart. At least that would have been normal. How can I face people when this news gets out?’

  ‘It is not likely to. The police have kept those details from the press. I believe your husband’
s secret is safe.’

  ‘My husband’s shame you mean.’

  ‘I’m sorry things ended so unhappily,’ I said evenly, hoping to bring the conversation and indeed her visit to a close, but Sandra Riley showed no signs of leaving. She hadn’t done with me yet.

  After a pause, she said, ‘I know the police version of what happened last night but I want to hear your account. What my husband said to you and … and how he was killed. In detail. You owe it to me.’

  I supposed I did.

  Simply, but without leaving anything out which I thought relevant, I told her the story: my visit to the hotel and later the conversation I’d had with her husband at The Loophole. And then how he had been killed by the handbag snatcher. As I talked, to my surprise, I saw that great white mask slowly crumble and the eyes mist with tears. This formidable ice maiden was melting. She was genuinely moved. This was indeed a turn up for the book.

  When I finished, I waited for her to say something but she remained silent, her mouth moving slowly, lips quivering, as she attempted to control her emotions. To cover the awkwardness of the moment, I offered her a cigarette. She waved her hand at me in refusal and unclasping her bag withdrew a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

  ‘If only he’d told me. If only he had confided in me …’

  ‘That would have been very difficult.’

  She nodded, a faint smile touching her lips. ‘For Walter, yes. He hadn’t much backbone. But I loved him, you know. In my own way.’

  I wondered which way that was and hoped I never experienced it.

  ‘I was quite prepared to divorce him if he had been seeing another woman … but I didn’t expect all this. To be killed by a common thug.’ She leaned forward, her tear-stained face harsh in the direct beam of my desk lamp. ‘It offends me,’ she said. ‘It makes me sick to my stomach.’

  ‘I am sure the police—’

  I got no further. She threw her head back and gave a harsh theatrical laugh. Joan Crawford was making a return. ‘The police,’ she repeated with a sneer, as though she was referring to something she had stepped in. ‘Don’t tell me that you were going to say that the police will get their man – the man who killed my husband?’ She gave another mirthless laugh. ‘It’s just another handbag snatch to them, one with a little complication of a dead body. London is seething with crime: gangsters, petty thugs, looters, con artists, Nazi sympathizers. How are the police going to catch the anonymous bastard who murdered Walter – the weirdo in the dress and wig? I can see the case being filed away already as yet another unsolved crime of the blackout.’

  I sat quietly while she expelled this anger. Sadly, what she was saying had the ring of truth to it. Unless her husband’s killer made a habit of shooting women for their handbag, Walter Riley would be just another statistic on the growing list of unsolved murders.

  Suddenly, Sandra Riley clunked open her capacious handbag once more. This time she extracted a long brown envelope and plopped it on my desk.

  ‘That’s yours,’ she said tartly. ‘Fifty pounds in fivers.’

  ‘What for?’ I said quietly.

  ‘For services you are about to render. Mr Hawke, I want you to find my husband’s killer.’

  I stared in surprise at the envelope for some moments as though it was going to speak to me and explain the workings of Mrs Riley’s mind. Here was a woman who, twenty-four hours earlier, was all set to crucify her husband in a divorce court for his adulterous behaviour and now she was the tearful widow begging me – all right, bribing me with money – to find Walter’s murderer.

  And tearful widow she was. In my line of work I’ve seen quite a few performances in my office of varying effectiveness, men and women who have come to me with emotional tales of pain and anguish. Nine times out of ten they are contrived and theatrical in nature and usually transparent, however polished.

  This was no performance.

  Sandra Riley was a woman in turmoil. I think I had misjudged her. Here was a wife who had believed that her husband was having sex and other intimacies with another woman and had steeled herself for the uncovering of this sordid, illicit affair. She had stiffened her sinews and boarded up her heart, even to the extent of fooling herself that she didn’t care for the swine. But the shocking unexpected blow of losing her Walter in a brutal killing had brought home to her how much she really had cared for the man. It seemed that now, despite learning the hurtful truth about Walter’s sexual peccadillo, Mrs Riley was a woman swamped by grief and was fighting it the only way she knew how – by getting her own back.

  By getting even.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that,’ I said softly, fully aware of the finding a black cat in a dark cellar challenge that this investigation would present to me.

  ‘Why not? You’re a detective, aren’t you? Or are you only capable of spying into people’s bedrooms?’

  It hurts when the nail is walloped on the head. She had a point: I was a detective. And murder was the worst of crimes. I looked across at her, her features having regained something of their resilience, despite the tear-smudged mascara around the eyes. She seemed to have more faith in my abilities than I had. This pricked my conscience. Curse my ever dutiful conscience. I knew in my heart of hearts, that prompted by Sandra Riley’s request, I could not just let the matter rest where it was.

  ‘Very well,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’ll try my best.’

  She gave me a tight smile and pushed the brown envelope further in my direction.

  ‘Tell me about your husband’s job. You said he held a menial post at the War Office …’

  Sandra Riley nodded. ‘That wasn’t quite honest. I was feeling angry and very betrayed when I said that. Actually he is … was on the secretarial staff to Brigadier General Anstruther, Commander in Chief of the Home Forces. Walter had been there since the outbreak of the war. My brother Edward had managed to get him the job.’

  ‘Your brother works at the War Office, too.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of work was your husband involved with at the War Office?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t really know. I never asked, but if I had, he wouldn’t have been allowed to say anyway. He was a journalist on a local paper before the war but because of his defective eyesight he was graded B1, fit for office duties only. He so wanted to do something to help the war effort and so Edward pulled a few strings and got him into Whitehall.’

  A cold shiver ran down my spine. The irony. The cruel coincidence. Graded B1 for defective eyesight. My own fate. Well, in the sense that having only one eye clearly marked me out as someone with ‘defective eyesight’.

  ‘Did he form any friendships at work?’ I asked, quickly derailing this particular train of unsettling thought and getting back to the matter in hand.

  ‘None that I was aware of … but then I didn’t know he dressed up as a woman, so you could say that I knew very little about my husband.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to your brother at the War Office. I need to find out more about Walter’s life and duties there. Can you arrange that?’

  She nodded. ‘His name is Captain Michael Eddowes. I’ll let him know to expect you to call on him at the War Office; although I’m not sure he’ll know any more than me.’

  She snapped her handbag and rose from her chair, her imperious manner fully reclaimed. ‘I expect you to keep me informed of any progress you make. Don’t disappoint me, Mr Hawke. Don’t disappoint me.’

  After she had gone, leaving behind the strong smell of her own perfume which lingered in the air like a threat, I sat for some time staring blankly into space. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t know why, but I felt for the first time that with this investigation, I had really bitten off more than I could chew.

  I had just decided to spend a little relaxing, amnesia time at The Velvet Cage where, with the help of some jazz and alcohol, I hoped to soften the edges of ragged reality when the phone rang calling a temporary halt to my plans.
/>   ‘Johnny. This is Susan McAndrew. Nurse McAndrew.’

  It only took a few seconds for me to reach into my memory bank and withdraw the relevant information. Oh, Nurse McAndrew. Susan. The lady who had looked after the little boy Peter in hospital during the Pamela Palfrey case. I’d had more than a little soft spot for Nurse McAndrew – and it wasn’t just because of the uniform – but she was a dedicated professional with little time for gentlemen admirers. Well, I may be a scruffy private detective but I still think of myself as a gentleman. A kind of knight in rather shabby armour. In another time, another place, in peacetime maybe, there would have been time to woo Nurse McAndrew. Maybe.

  It was Susan who had arranged for Peter to be evacuated to her sister’s farm in Devon, away from the bombs and the terrors of London.

  ‘How nice to hear from you,’ I said, with as much assimilated Hollywood charm as I could muster.

  ‘It’s Peter,’ she said sharply. The tone and urgency of her voice robbing me of any delusion that she was ringing me for pleasurable purposes.

  At the mention of the lad’s name, I stiffened. What now? I thought. It must be bad news.

  ‘What about Peter?’ I asked, hesitantly fearing the worst.

  ‘He’s run away.’

  I don’t know why I chuckled, but I did.

  ‘You think it’s funny.’ Suddenly the nurse had turned stern.

  ‘Not funny, no, just a relief. I thought you were going to tell me something far worse.’

  There was a brief silence at the end of the line. ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I don’t want to sound overdramatic, but this is serious. My sister is beside herself with worry.’

  ‘Of course. What’s happened? Give me the facts …’

  ‘There aren’t many facts. It seems that he never really settled down there and then there was some trouble at the school.’