A Spider in the Cup

by Barbara Cleverly

  Kingstone shook his head.

  “Then I must conclude that someone in the last ten hours has contacted you and transmitted a dire message to the contrary.”

  “There are things you don’t need to know—shouldn’t know, Sandilands.” His expression was fleetingly apologetic. He turned aside. And then, aggressively: “This is your backyard she’s gone missing in. Why don’t you just take off and do your job? I want her found.”

  “If you seriously want her found, you’ll give me the information you’re holding back. I’m not in the habit of sending good men off on a wild goose chase when the goose in question is known to be nesting a couple of yards away.”

  “I’ve nothing more to say.” Kingstone’s face showed unflinching resolution.

  “Then there’s little more I can do.”

  The shutters had closed over Armitage’s lively features on hearing the stand-off and it was Joe’s eye he refused to meet. The two Americans exchanged a glance Joe could not interpret, a glance of collusion that reminded him that he was dealing with two of the players of Nine Men’s Morris. Two influential men who—Joe was convinced—were up to no good and operating on his patch.

  Joe fought down a rush of anger as he remembered that this dubious pair had spent their afternoon banqueting, toasting themselves with champagne, drinking the best of claret and brandy, playing a child’s chequer game and plotting God knew what mischief while less than half a mile away, the body fluids of an unidentified young dancer had been flowing away down the channels of the pathologist’s marble slab. She was still calling out to Joe and now a connection with the senator was more than just the uneasy suspicion his copper’s mind had entertained from the moment he’d set eyes on her corpse. He held the physical connection in his hand and he was going to play it for all it was worth.

  “Your obduracy is noted,” he said, coldly official. “I have to tell you something that will shock you even further. Miss Ivanova doesn’t have it quite right—there is one infallible way of identifying the toe. That is by matching it with the rest of the foot. The characteristics of the cut itself will establish ownership. We have the remainder of this young lady, thought to be a ballet dancer, and sadly dead these two or three days, in our keeping at the police laboratory at Scotland Yard. Her body was dug up on the north bank of the Thames this morning.”

  “No! You’ve found her? Natalia? Dead? Why the hell didn’t you—”

  “Stop right there! Earlier today I attended the autopsy of a young woman whose name is still unknown to us. The cause of death, likewise, has not been ascertained. She could be any one of about five hundred dark-haired dancers in London. My men are checking with ballet companies, dance schools, music halls and travelling circuses for missing women. What would you have had me do? Storm into and drag you out of your Pilgrims’ luncheon on the off-chance that the body was that of a lady-friend of yours who had chosen to avoid your company for a couple of days? In view of these later developments, I see now that I must ask you, sir, to come along to the Yard to view the body and attempt an identification.” Joe hated sounding like a bobby in a witness box but perhaps a touch of cooling formality was called for at this stage. He judged that Kingstone was coming to the boil and already under more pressure than they had knowledge of.

  Before Kingstone could answer, the telephone on his bureau rang.

  The senator glowered, composed his features and picked up the receiver. “I’m right here. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  He turned an expressionless face to Joe and Armitage. “Gentlemen. Would you be so kind as to pick up Miss Ivanova and skedaddle? Weather permitting, I am about to speak on the radiotelephone to the President of the United States.” He gave them a sudden, bitter grin. “He’ll want to know if I’m settling in and making friends. I wouldn’t care to have you overhear my answer.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Ten o’clock. Inspector Orford cast a calculating look at the skies over the Thames and his agitation increased. He muttered to the river policeman standing quietly by his side in the shadows: “Clouds moving in, Eddie. It’ll be dark in a minute or two. Can’t wait any longer. Something’s gone wrong.”

  They were sharing, in some discomfort, the confined space of a workman’s shelter put up at the inspector’s request by the City of London maintenance department, keeping watch on the Chelsea foreshore.

  River Officer Eddie Evans shrugged. He was a tough-looking young man with the weathered features and muscular build of a sailor. The peak of his képi, pulled squarely down over his forehead, accentuated the mischievous glitter of his eyes, the black slicker cape about his shoulders turned him into an element of the grey and umber palette that was the riverbank in this under-lit part of Chelsea Reach. He was at home here in the shadows. “Well, there goes your tide,” he murmured, “more than half way out, I’d say. Next low in twelve hours’ time—broad daylight.”

  Orford hoped this wasn’t going to turn technical. He knew as much about the tides as most Londoners: they came and went twice a day. If asked, he would have hazarded a guess that the water rose by the height of a London double-decker bus. But, truth to say, he only noticed it when it disgorged something unpleasant into his lap.

  “There’s a slippage of course—a drag of an hour and a bit each day—so what you’re seeing at this minute is not exactly the scene as it was three days ago.” His River Rat associate never consulted a Thames tides table, Orford noted. These men, technically a part of the metropolitan police, spiritually an independent outfit, lived their lives on a crime-infested fast-flowing sewer that carved its way through the busiest city in the world. They were an unlikely blend of law enforcer and sailor and they’d take on anyone—drugs gangs, smugglers, Lascar pirates and other low life—armed with no more than a stout baton held in a gnarled hand. The same hand that, the next minute, would be extended to save a drowning soul from the water or haul in a corpse caught in the nets they kept aboard their motor launch. The Thames was the last resort of the desperate—and occasionally the first resort of the murderous.

  “You’d have got more or less the same conditions as we have now. Perhaps a bit less light in the sky,” said Officer Evans. Keeping it simple for his land-lubber colleague, thank God, Orford thought. “If your villains really knew what they were doing, they’d have made their play before the moon got any higher. Now—tonight’s moon? You’ll find she’ll be waxing gibbous. That’s three quarters to you, Governor. It’ll be too bright in half an hour. Time to pull your finger out!… Sir,” he remembered to add.

  Oh, Lord! Moon timetables to consider now as well as tides. Orford felt suddenly old, wrong-footed and crotchety. “You’ll find I’ll be waxing gibbous, my lad, if you dish out any more of your advice when you ought to be keeping quiet.”

  “S’what I’m here for!” the young man said, unabashed. “On-the-spot fluvial, riparian and meterological information and support.” The words tripped off his tongue with relish. “And here’s a bit more you can have for nothing: if I were planting a body right there,” Eddie pointed to the foreshore where the dowsers had been at work, “I’d have stuck it in at midnight. On Wednesday. Perfect conditions. Wouldn’t have taken long. Easy digging and the water washes your tracks away. Wouldn’t be the first time some smart aleck had the same thought. You’d be surprised what we’ve found a foot or so under! You hide your stuff and clear off sharpish. Even if the next tide dislodges it, you’re long gone. And, once it’s afloat—well it could have come from a hundred miles upstream as far as anybody can tell. Chances are it’ll be rotted away beyond ID-ing by the time it ends up in our nets.”

  He peered back over his shoulder at the embankment. “No gas lights to speak of? Did you think to …?”

  “Someone’s removed the gas mantle. And no one’s reported it yet. Not very socially responsible, the residents. Very convenient for our burial party, are we thinking?”

  “So. Is he at home, your witness? Shall we go and disturb him? Ask him what he saw and heard two n
ights ago at about this time? What vehicles he saw on the embankment.”

  Orford began to realise that patience was not a virtue valued by the River Rats. Action was more in their line. “Hold your horses, Eddie. I’ll ask the questions. My beat blokes are aware of someone skulking around in the area but haven’t spotted him today. They weren’t alerted until this afternoon so they weren’t exactly on the lookout. I got here a couple of hours ago—full daylight—and he hasn’t approached the boat in that time. That’s a south-facing slope open to direct sun … there’s no way he would have spent the afternoon out there under a boat. So—he’s not there yet. He’s either got wind of something and scarpered or he’s gone off for a fish supper.”

  Officer Evans was not at ease. “Look, sir—these rough sleepers—there’s hundreds of ’em on the foreshore along down as far as the estuary. They wash in and out as regular as the tides. And when they’ve found a billet, they stick to it. Fight for it. Establish rights. A boat like that,” he pointed to the overturned clinker, “may not look much to a bloke like you with a house in Bermondsey, but it’s dry and it keeps the worst of the weather off. A bit of shelter worth staking a claim to. The minute the ‘owner’ fails to turn up you can bet your boots someone else will take over. If you want the right one, he’s in there already—nipped in when you weren’t looking—or he’s buggered off and you’ll find the wrong bloke sneaks in to take up residence.”

  Orford made his decision. “Let’s go. Torches off.”

  They approached in silence, just able in the dying light to avoid obstacles on the dried mud. They paused within a foot of the rotting timbers and looked at each other. Eddie Evans held a finger under his nose, registering disgust. Orford nodded in agreement. The riverbank was a stinking place but punching through the general background of effluent was an overpowering odour of decay. It was seeping up through the flaking boards of the upturned boat.

  Eddie put a hand on the surface. The planks still retained heat from the afternoon sun. At a nod from Orford, Eddie rapped on the wood. They listened. Eddie knocked again, more loudly, announcing, “Thames Police! Anybody at home?” No sound. Orford shook his head and mimed uplifting the boat. The two officers clicked on the strong beams of their police torches, placed them on the ground, illuminating the scene, and seized the landward rim of the gunwale.

  “Go!” grunted Orford and the boat, lighter than he had anticipated, shot upwards. The whole contraption rolled over, rocked back drunkenly and settled onto its ancient keel.

  Gasping, spluttering and swearing, it was a long moment before they could communicate with each other. Orford flung a large cotton handkerchief over his nose and mouth in a vain effort to blot out the stench, the buffet of hot air that hit him in the face and the swarm of flies that rose up to invade his nostrils. He was distantly aware of a stream of sea-salty curses spouting from the River Rat.

  “You were right, Eddie,” Orford gasped. “Someone’s at home. And, I’d say, been right here, simmering gently in the heat all afternoon. No need to check for vital signs,” he added queasily. “Flies seem to have made that decision for us. They always know. We need help with this one. Look are you all right to stay and keep the dear departed company while I nip to the police box?… Um, what would you say to dowsing the lamps?”

  “Good idea! Wouldn’t want to attract an audience.” The officer grinned. “Can’t stand ghouls. Make it sharp though, Guv! I don’t mind the dark but I don’t like talking to myself.”

  He switched off the torches to keep his vigil over the silent corpse.

  CHAPTER 12

  As they entered the gloom and disorder of the anteroom to the police laboratory, Kingstone brushed a sooty cobweb from his shoulder and snorted in disgust. “Is this the best you can do? Who’s behind the door at the end of the corridor? Count Dracula?”

  “No, sir.” Joe was icily polite. “Just one of the two best pathologists in the world—nothing more alarming. The Met have suffered the privations of many years of cutbacks and we’re fortunate indeed to be able to afford his services. We could have had our subject taken to the bright lights and shining surfaces of St. Mary’s or St. Bartholomew’s hospital across the city but discretion and speed seemed to be called for.”

  Doctor Rippon, at least, offered reassurance by his presence. Even Kingstone appeared stunned by the handsome figure in the austere elegance of an evening suit and stiff-collared dress shirt. Joe noted that Rippon refrained from offering his hand to his visitors on being introduced but inclined his head with great courtesy. Joe had seen him do this before. Many of the people arriving at his laboratory or pathology lab, already in a state of distress, were squeamish—or superstitious—about touching the hand of the “death doctor,” he’d explained, and in deference to this, he never put them on the spot. On meeting the doctor some months ago, Joe had refused to take notice of his reticence, guessing the reason for it, and had firmly reached for and shaken the warm strong hand, which was probably the most hygienically clean in London.

  “Going on somewhere, doctor?” Joe asked. “Surprised to find you still here.”

  “Oh, I took five hours off to go back to Bart’s. Fitted in three more post mortems. All straightforward—not like this one to which I returned, after a shower and a shave, in the hope that the back-room boys had come up with test results. I told them you’d flagged it as top priority.”

  “Quite right. Do they have them?”

  Rippon held out a manila envelope. “Good lads! They’ve strained a fetlock getting it ready before the weekend breaks over us.” Joe had noticed the staff usually responded with commendable efficiency to the doctor’s needs. He felt the same compulsion himself. “You’ll find what you want in there. It’s all typed up, checked by me and signed. A few surprises, I think you’ll say. I’ll stay on and work through them with you if you wish.” This was a serious offer, made with a smile. And, typically of Rippon, it came with no reference, petulant or joking, to the fact that he was already dressed for an evening with more animated company than the police morgue could supply.

  “But this is the gentleman who may be able to identify our young lady, I take it? When I got your call I had her body brought out of cold storage and placed on the table. If you’ll come this way? It’s just next door.”

  Joe was glad of the courtesy, glad that Kingstone was to be let off the chilling experience of the opening of the morgue drawers with their nightmarish squeaking and the inch by inch revelation of grisly contents. He’d known fainter hearts to turn and run.

  Kingstone turned to Julia and Armitage. “You two don’t have to come in. I’ll do this myself.”

  “No. I want to see her,” Julia said.

  In the end, the four of them crowded into the pathology laboratory with Rippon. Joe stationed himself on the far side of the table the better to watch the reactions of the two main players. They all stood quietly, staring at the body. She had been laid out with a white sheet draped over her from head to foot. With solemnity Rippon took hold of the sheet and drew it down below her shoulders. The presentation was neatly done. There were no signs of the postmortem incisions other than the row of stitches running downwards from her neck and away out of sight. The hair, now dry, had been combed out and rested in a dark cloud about the waxen features, concealing the pathologist’s work on the head.

  In the silence that followed, Joe heard drips of water falling from a tap into the metal sink in the corner and counted to six before anyone responded. Kingstone reached for the comfort of another hand. Joe noted it was Julia to whom he’d turned to share this tense moment. But out of despair or relief?

  It was Julia who spoke first. “This is not Natalia Kirilovna. I’m sorry, I’ve never seen this girl before. I don’t know her.”

  Joe’s eyes flashed to Armitage standing behind the pair. Bill raised his eyebrows, signalling helpless mystification. Kingstone shook his head in denial also but remained where he was, hypnotised by the pathetic sight. Finally, he spoke to the d
octor. “Poor child! Poor little creature! So like Natty but not her. May we see her feet? Yes, there it is. Don’t ask me why, doctor, but I seem to be in possession of the missing part. Sandilands? You have it? I think we should restore it to the doctor.”

  Puzzled, Rippon watched as Joe produced the gold chocolate box, opened it and offered him a view of the contents. For a moment, prompted by the familiar gesture, Joe was seized by the ghastly urge to share a joke, the kind of grisly exchange of what passes for humour to fend off the horror of the most tragic circumstances. Rippon looked from the box and back to Joe and his eyes flared in response. He fought back the comment he’d been about to make but his shoulders shook as he slipped on a glove, delicately crooked his little finger and extracted the offering. “You can keep the rest for later. I mean—you’ll be wanting to retain the box for processing, no doubt. I’ll need time to examine this, but, yes, at a quick sighting, I’d say we have here the last piece of the jigsaw.”

  “If only!” Joe muttered.

  Rippon found a tray and dealt with the object. He turned again to the visitors. “One last thing: this was delivered here after I left to go to Bart’s, Sandilands. I’ve no idea when. I found it in my in-tray a minute ago. It’s addressed to me but inside there’s a sealed envelope with your name on it.”

  Joe thanked him. “Probably a note from Inspector Orford. He’d expect me to be back here this evening.”

  Joe glanced at the typed address on the outer cover and was intrigued. Not from the inspector. Orford would have had to scrawl his own letters on any envelope he was sending to Joe. Secretarial assistance was at a premium these days, the few girls who remained overburdened with work. Even Assistant Commissioners had to wait a day on occasion before general typing came through from the pool. Urgent notes were invariably handwritten. He even addressed his own envelopes to save Miss Snow, his personal secretary, the time. He opened it and took out the inner envelope. He looked again, startled.