Bottled Spider

by John Gardner

  With one tug the first hinged section came dropping down. The hinges had even been nicely oiled so that the stretch of steps came down as smooth as the reaction to a dose of Eno’s Fruit Salts.

  The lady policeman lived on the fifth floor. Number fifty-two. Kill, Golly said in his mind. He knew that was the only thing that mattered. He was only useful to other people if he killed when he was ordered. The wrong woman in Overchurch was just practice, he giggled and, counting cheerfully, he started to climb to the fifth floor. When he got there he was delighted to see how easy it was. The landing windows on each floor were like doors, wooden frameworks with a latch handle and a lock: windows in the top half shaped like small church windows.

  The lock was easy. Mickey the Mangle had taught him all about locks, how to use a simple pick, and this lock wasn’t simple, it was downright wrong in the head: put up its hands and surrendered as soon as he got his little picks out. ‘These’ll come in useful one day,’ Mickey the Mangle had said. ‘Slide in the right pick; hold your breath, jiggle it a bit, like you would if it were your pego in a girl’s diddley-pout.’ Golly laughed now as he jiggled it about and turned it. With an easy click the bolt eased itself back, neat as a bee’s toe, and he was in.

  He took a step forward and knew it was the lady policeman’s flat, it was where she lived, where she slept, had her life which he’d soon take from her. Golly grinned. Then he walked the flat, going from room to room, like a ghost who walked but was not seen. He even went to the bedroom, smelled the scent of her, opened the drawers in her dressing table and held her private things. It gave him a wonderful charge, like having sex with her.

  He took several deep breaths and then began to look for things, and found them — or one at least. A little diary that had been left wide open on her bedside table. He could decipher the round neat writing, easy as pie. There was this note against Sunday 29th December 1940; and it said, Josh Dance, Dinner. 5 p.m. Then an address he could read because he knew where it was, near Albemarle Street. That was close by the Dilly. Knew it and knew Josh Dance as well. Lavender knew Josh Dance. Wouldn’t let him come near her. ‘Golly, don’t ever let that man into the house. Throw him out, keep him away. He’s rough stuff. Can do you damage. Give him the Sunday punch.’

  And the lady policeman was going to see him at five o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Easy as mittens. Golly could set that up simple as kiss your arse. Maybe he wouldn’t have to come here again, climb the fire escape as he’d planned.

  He had thought of staying here in her flat now but that was a big risk. She might come home with someone else and that could be difficult, even dangerous. No, he slunk away, but left the door on to the fire escape closed, but unlocked. Just in case. Better be more safe than sorry, mum would say. If he did her near Josh Dance there would be a perfect suspect on hand. The filth must know about Josh Dance and how he gets his greens.

  And off he went back to Lavender’s.

  Invisible.

  *

  Sitting in Dandy Tom’s office, Suzie was developing an even deeper respect for Molly Abelard. She certainly knew her job. She sat there now telling them how she had pried open Josh Dance’s secrets.

  Some were in the files, but those had led her out and about, knocking on doors, talking to people who had known Josh Dance for a long time.

  Josh Dance, as he now called himself, had a record. Two minor offences, one with a car and one as a kid, pinching stuff from Fortnum & Mason. Then there was his real ‘trouble’ in 1930. The ‘trouble’ was in connection with a common prostitute who had been so badly abused that it was thought she was going to die. And it was Josh Dance who had done the abusing. She was a girl called Moira. Moira Finisterre, if you could believe that. But she was a classy piece, Molly said. Very classy and used to be something in the rag trade, something to do with fashion. After that she had tried to be an actress, but that hadn’t worked out, so by 1930 Moira was reduced to the most elderly of professions. By the end of July of that year she was doing well by the standards of the relatively undemanding frail sisterhood, offering herself as a specialist. She had a patch of pavement in Knightsbridge and had been known to advertise — ‘Young lady willing to do anything on demand.’ It was the kind of bait that would draw a man like Josh Dance, who was not Josh Dance then but David Slaughter — his true birth name.

  His father was C. F. Slaughter, the artist. ‘His works fetch a good price on the market these days ...’

  ‘And his son’s got three in his flat. Good hedge against inflation, I’d think.’ Suzie was glad to have this confirmed.

  ‘Slaughter dated Moira Finisterre regularly — on a professional basis of course. I’ve talked to her and she says it was the lure of money. After the first time she couldn’t pretend it was a surprise. He paid well and came back for more.’ To start with it was just not unpleasant spankings, but it became more serious. ‘He liked caning me on my bare bottom,’ Moira had told her. It got worse, then on 10 August 1930, he almost beat her to death.

  Moira Finisterre recovered because the police were called by a neighbour and David Slaughter was brought to trial. ‘Claimed it was a sex game that got out of hand. The bench tut-tutted — you know how they can be — and Miss Finisterre was criticized and presented as a common prostitute. Mr Slaughter was let off with a slap on the wrist and advised not to get mixed up with women like Miss Finisterre ever again.’ Molly smiled grimly.

  It was C. F. Slaughter who threatened his son. Said he’d cut him off without the proverbial, so, David Slaughter changed his name to Josh Dance, cashed in some shares and became a partner of Jewell, Baccus & Dance. By 1932 he had begun to make his name in the business of estate agents. Very respectable.

  ‘He also joined the Terriers’ — the Terriers being the Territorial Army — ‘but he didn’t give up the ladies.’ Molly laid a finger along the side of her nose and Tommy did the same as though it were a secret sign between the pair of them. ‘I’ve talked to quite a few ladies of the night and he’s known. Some girls went with him, some won’t even think about it. Some only went once. Some ended up in hospital. But they all said he was up front. Always told them the truth.’

  Josh Dance would approach girls, offer a lot of money and tell them exactly what he wanted. ‘I like dominating women,’ he would say, ‘and I’m willing to pay.’

  Molly said that some were quite interested because it was a bit of role reversal — it’s usually the other way around. The gents want to have their bums whacked as a rule. But Josh Dance didn’t stop at that. It got very hairy and I gather he has all the apparatus in that flat of his.’

  ‘Really? That could be handy,’ Tommy drawled.

  ‘Ah, but there’s been a recent change.’ Molly raised a cautionary hand.

  She had talked to one girl who went home with him on Christmas Eve. ‘Yes, last week’ Abelard told them. ‘She claimed he was honest with her. Gave her sexy underwear. Told her what to wear. Gave her a long spiel about what he’d like to do, then couldn’t. Just lay there, cuddling her, stroking her, whispering to her. Couldn’t seem to do anything else. Couldn’t get it up. And another of the girls told me that he went on to her about having punished himself. Needed to. ‘I was worried about doing any real harm,’ he had said.’

  ‘Does this help us at all?’ Tommy Livermore asked.

  ‘Well —’ Abelard waggled her hand, unsure — ‘there’s a good side,’ she continued. ‘He showed great gallantry in France. He’s now been invalided out of the Army. Badly wounded near Dunkirk. Got an MC for it.’

  ‘Not really of interest to us, though, is it?’ Dandy Tom remained unimpressed.

  ‘Except the little matter of possible Baccus relatives,’ Suzie reminded him.

  ‘Want us to go in and put him to the question? The Tombs?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Don’t think so, Guv’nor. I can cope with dominant men,’ Suzie remarked with the tiniest of smiles. Dandy Tom smiled back, frosty, and she wondered if she had gone too far, then his cockeyed
look told her she hadn’t.

  When Abelard left they began to take a long and hard look at the list of people close to Jo Benton, mapping out what order they should be interviewed.

  Tommy maintained that this time they should do it together. ‘To start with, I think we should walk in on the ones you’ve already interviewed, heart.’

  ‘Some of them aren’t really the kind of people you can walk in on, darling.’

  ‘Let me teach you something, heart.’ Tommy leaned back. ‘The human being isn’t born who can’t be walked in on. Have the right kind of rank, and the correct motivation and you can even walk in on the King — unannounced and out of uniform.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘Right, heart.’ Pause, count of five. ‘I love you, heart. Don’t ever forget it.’

  ‘Right. That goes for me as well, sir. So we do the great Gerald Vine, Daniel Flint, Steven Fermin and Barry Forbes on Monday and Tuesday?’

  ‘Mmmm.’ He nodded. ‘On second thoughts, I think we should arrange matters concerning Gerald Vine. Give him an appointment.’

  ‘You know best, sir.’

  *

  On his way back to Soho — still invisible — Golly bought a copy of the Evening News from a vendor near Piccadilly. ‘Hello, Golly, you been a naughty boy, haven’t you?’ the newspaper seller told him. ‘They still looking for you then?’ which made him scuttle off back to Lavender’s place. In fact it so threw him that he almost went to the front of the building. Then he remembered just in time and turned back, slipping through the garage.

  Golly couldn’t read well, but he could decipher things if he took it slowly, and on the front page he had spotted a photograph. It was a picture of Mr Churchill. The Prime Minister was walking towards his car, and by his side were two men one of whom was the Mark. Golly was quite taken aback. What was the Mark doing with a great man like Winston Churchill? Stuck up bugger, Mark. He should kill the sod.

  Twenty-Seven

  They had told her there was no need to worry — at least Dandy Tom had told her — and she knew they would be close at hand: Tommy Livermore, Molly Abelard and Shirley Cox. Brian at the wheel. They’d kept the circle of knowledge closed. The others were working on the old piano wire murder investigations, while Tommy had sent some of them back into the field — Camford and Hampshire — so what was there to be nervous about anyway? It wasn’t as though she was going into a lion’s den, or even anywhere she was certain of coming close to Golly Goldfinch, who hadn’t even been caught yet though ‘Operation Bullring’ was still running: running quite fast at that.

  On the Saturday night, after Dandy Tom had been very attentive and Suzie really felt she was learning wonderful things, she had lain back in bed and thought about the horror of Golly Goldfinch.

  His name had about it the ring of an end-of-the-pier comedian — ‘Here he is, your own, your very own Golly Goldfinch.’ ‘Hello, hello, hello, I’m going to sing you a little song. Yes, I am. You may well laugh, missus, but I’m going to sing it: a little song — from the black book missus — entitled, “Ain’t it grand to be blooming well dead”. Take it away maestro.’

  She had imagined what he sounded like and had that afternoon asked Tommy — ‘He’s like that geezer in the Bible,’ Tom told her. ‘Slow of speech, and of a slow tongue, but he’s — pardon my French, heart — cunning as a shithouse rat — as they say.’ Dandy Tom sometimes used shockingly coarse language, she considered.

  Relentless. That was the word for Goldfinch, she decided. Relentless and now, possibly, unstoppable: a child of darkness. To her, Golly had assumed nightmare proportions: a marching figure who plodded on, never slowing down but killing anybody who got in his way. Killing them without even a thought; taking lives out of their bodies without any sane reason. He would kill anyone, and, if Tommy was right, he was being guided by someone who bore a dreadful grudge.

  But now her sights were set on putting Josh Dance to the question, preferably without him realizing she was at it. She wore her heavy dark skirt, the one with the pockets because it was wide and she had been able to hide Billy Mulligan’s eight-inch baton in the waistband: she’d sewn a deep pocket to steady it against her thigh. When she was dressing, Tommy came up behind her and slid a hand into one of the skirt’s pockets. ‘Oh, heart,’ he had said. ‘Would that I were small, dapper and neat. I could fit into this pocket of yours and touch the silk of your clothes, and the warmth of your lovely grommet.’ And she had risen to his mood and told him, ‘Unhand me, sir.’

  Of course one thing had led to another, and she was out of skirt, pants, bra, the lot before they were done. But now, at this very moment, ten minutes to five on a bitter cold Sunday evening with few people about and a hint of mist in the air, she walked steadily up Piccadilly with her big coat over the dark wide skirt, a white blouse and a tight little bolero jacket of material matching the skirt. A friend had run them up last year with one or two other bits and pieces. She remembered saying to Charlotte that she’d be okay for clothes even if the war lasted seven years.

  The thought of Charlotte made her feel low and depressed again. She’d been fighting it off all weekend, and here it was again just as she turned down Albemarle Street, crossing the road, as a car came blundering out into the Dilly. Through the murk she glimpsed an elderly woman in the back of the car, bending the driver’s ear, yattering on and on at him.

  She reached the familiar door with the discreet brass plate — ‘Jewell, Baccus & Dance, Estate & Lettings Agency’. Rang the bell, as she had been told, turned the doorknob and stepped inside.

  Across the road, leaning against an area wall, having a quiet cigarette, his right shoulder on the stonework, Golly pushed himself up straight. He had at first seen only the outline of the woman. But this time he had no doubt, as the light from the interior fell across her, and as she turned to close the door that same light briefly lit her face and the gold hair above it, trapped in the scarf tied gypsy style around her head. I’ll take the scarf, he decided. When she lies stone dead on the floor with her windpipe crushed and her tongue protruding, that’s when I’ll take the scarf: when I’ve done what I was instructed to do. Kill the lady policeman. Kill with the wire.

  He began to walk up the street: not his usual plodding, unstoppable, unrelenting walk, his walk that was, in his head, like one of them German Panzer tanks he’d seen on the newsreels at the pictures. Instead, Golly straightened up, squared his shoulders, walked with a certain air, and in his head he sang a song his mum used to sing in her little cracked voice —

  I know where I’m going,

  And I know who’s going with me,

  I know who I love,

  But the dear knows who I’ll marry.

  Behind him he could hear footsteps and, coming nearer, a car. He marched on, not looking back, just walking, steady, knowing where he was going and what business he had there. The car had slowed, and was pulling up behind him. He heard the door slam and then the car pulled away again. The footsteps had ceased. So, he thought. A trap, he thought. No.

  He turned left at the corner and the car, still moving very slowly, drove on.

  ‘That someone alone and palely loitering?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Someone walking their dog, I think, Guv’nor. Too dark,’ Molly Abelard said. ‘You all right?’ she asked Shirley who had got in again as instructed once Suzie was in the house.

  ‘Not taking any chances,’ Dandy Tom had said before they left. ‘We’ll do a slow circuit round the block, and keep it up until she comes out.’ That’s what they were doing now. Circling the block, right-hand turns, clockwise. He had told Suzie that should Dance become difficult she was to ‘blow her police whistle until the pea came out or until hell freezes over — whichever is first, heart.’

  Golly had stopped, listened, heard the car pulling away. He turned on his heel and began to run back silently from where he had come, across the road and up to the door. ‘Jewell. Baccus & Dance.’ In his head Golly was a fleet-footed Red Indian,
like at the pictures. Soon another scalp would be dripping.

  He pulled the knob towards him, holding it tight, always the best way to make a silent entry through an unlocked door. Turn the knob. Hold it, pull the door back against the jamb, then release and slowly open it. Golly was in. Two steps across the hall and into the cupboard under the stairs. Wait. Stay still. In his head, Golly sang again —

  Some say he’s black,

  But I say he’s bonny,

  The fairest of them all,

  My handsome, winsome Golly.

  He smiled his odd smile and his sharp teeth touched his lower lip, almost piercing the skin.

  Now, all I have to do is catch her on the turning of the stairs, or when she’s coming down.

  After that it will be terrible, because it’ll be Lavender next. His right hand was in his pocket and the wire was ready, bound tightly at both ends. Ready for the lady policeman. He all but giggled. Had her name on it, he thought. Ha-ha.

  *

  ‘A glass of sherry?’ Josh Dance still had his tan, his hair was shorter than the last time she’d seen him, but all in all he looked strikingly fit and smart in a double-breasted dark stripe. A military tailor, she thought. Maybe Gieves, maybe one of the others. He ushered her into the mellow light of his drawing room: two standard lamps switched on and the heavy dark green curtains drawn. The lamps were augmented by the picture lights above the Venetian, the Mall and the Champs-Élysées paintings, and the whole was set alight from a six-foot Christmas tree against the wall between the windows. The tree was decorated with expensive-looking baubles and miniature electric candles, something you didn’t see much of. Christmas cards covered the false mantel and a pair of side tables. Suzie turned around to try and get a better impression of the whole room. Somehow, she thought, it reflected wealth. She couldn’t have said why, but it was the first thing that came into her mind. Strange, she thought. The turmoil of war going on, yet in homes Christmas seemed untouched.