Dead of Winter jm-3

by Rennie Airth

  The traffic had been light that morning — petrol rationing had all but put an end to private motoring — and the radio car that Billy had brought with him to Waterloo on the chief inspector’s instructions made rapid time through the bomb-damaged streets. But as they approached their destination — Mrs Laski’s flat was in Montague Street, near the British Museum — Madden had requested the detour.

  ‘I’d like to have a look at the spot, if you don’t mind.’

  Billy himself had not been back to Little Russell Street since his first visit, and on their arrival there he noticed that the taped barrier sealing off the rubble-filled yard had been removed. There’d been no need to tell Madden what it signified. With nearly a week gone by since the murder had occurred and no lead having come to light, the chances of a successful outcome to the inquiry were dwindling rapidly.

  Leaving Helen in the car with the driver, they had got out and, at Madden’s suggestion, walked to the spot near the end of the street where Rosa had paused to talk to the air-raid warden.

  ‘She’d come around the corner, then?’ Madden had asked, and Billy had confirmed it.

  ‘That’s what Cotter said. He’d been standing in this doorway here, out of the wind.’ Billy indicated the recess.

  Madden had walked the last few steps to the corner and looked down Museum Street, eyes narrowed. ‘He might have waited there,’ he had muttered. ‘He would have heard them talking.’

  ‘Sir …?’ Billy didn’t understand what he was getting at, but as they walked back towards the car — and towards the spot where Rosa had been murdered — Madden had revealed what was troubling him.

  ‘I talked to Mr Sinclair about this, but I’m still not clear in my mind. Can you remember exactly what the warden said in his statement? Did Rosa seem uneasy when she spoke to him that night? She was obviously hurrying, not looking too carefully where she was going, and I wondered if it was because she thought someone might be after her.’

  ‘He said she seemed pleased to have run into him,’ Billy had replied, after a moment’s thought. ‘That was in his statement, I remember. He reckoned she might have been nervous walking through the blackout alone. But she couldn’t have been frightened, because when he offered to carry one of her bags and see her home she said it wouldn’t be necessary, she was almost there.’

  Madden had grunted. ‘But she paused all the same for a minute or two, while they talked?’

  ‘At least that. Why? Is it important?’ Billy had cocked a curious eye at his old mentor.

  ‘I don’t know … but it might be.’ Madden had shrugged. They had reached the yard and he stood staring down at the rubble, frowning. Then he’d nodded. ‘All right, let’s agree she wasn’t frightened. She didn’t think she was being stalked. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t on edge. It would explain why the warden said she seemed relieved to have bumped into him. She may have wanted to reassure herself.’

  ‘Of what?’ Billy didn’t understand. ‘You’ve just said she wasn’t afraid.’

  ‘Afraid, no … but uneasy, perhaps.’ Madden gnawed his lip. ‘Look, there’s nothing strange about a young woman feeling nervous as she walks through the blackout; especially if she hears, or thinks she hears, footsteps behind her. It probably means nothing, but she’s still relieved to run into someone like an air-raid warden, a figure of authority, and to spend a few minutes chatting to him while she assures herself that the steps she thought she heard behind her were only imaginary. Or that whoever it was has taken some other route and isn’t on her heels any longer. At that point she’d be happy to go on alone.’

  Billy nodded. ‘So it wasn’t a case of her thinking some man was after her. Someone she might have cause to be afraid of.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. She didn’t feel she was in danger.’

  ‘But this bloke was after her, all the same. He was waiting round the corner till she moved on. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Madden had nodded slowly. ‘After her. Rosa. That’s the point.’ He had looked up at Billy then. ‘I know there’s an argument for calling it a chance killing, but I don’t accept that. It’s already been established the act was deliberate, and I can’t see it happening in a moment of rage, or insanity. It was too cold; too clean; too efficient. The killer knew what he was about.’

  The silence that fell between them was broken by the sound of tapping, and they’d looked round to see Helen at the car window. She was pointing to her wristwatch.

  ‘But as to why he murdered her.’ Madden shook his head hopelessly as he turned away. ‘That defies all reason.’

  The service had ended, but the mourners still clustered around the rabbi, a young man with a bushy beard, whose voice as he intoned Kaddish had reached Madden only faintly where he was standing beside the cart that had carried Rosa Nowak’s remains down the gravelled path to the graveside. More clearly heard had been the ‘amens’ which had punctuated his low, sing-song murmur.

  As Madden watched, Helen detached herself from the group and crossed the path to where he was standing.

  ‘I managed to have a word with Mrs Laski. She won’t need a lift back to her flat. She’s going to spend the rest of the day with friends in Hampstead. One of them is a doctor. He has a car.’

  Helen slipped a gloved hand through her husband’s arm. Although the sleet had stopped falling, a keen wind still blew across the open expanse of the cemetery and she had covered her head with a woollen scarf, tucking the ends into her coat, which was buttoned to the neck.

  ‘I think we can slip away now. I’d like to stop off at St John’s Wood for an hour before we go back. I must see how Aunt Maud’s getting on. I’m sure Billy won’t mind dropping us off. Where is he, by the way?’

  The two men had been standing together, a little apart from the others.

  ‘He’s gone back to the car.’ Madden nodded towards the gates. ‘His driver said they were trying to get hold of him on the radio. Some message from the Yard.’

  He watched for a moment as the group at the graveside began to break up. Two men armed with shovels moved forward to begin the task of filling in the grave.

  ‘Do I need to say anything to Mrs Laski?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I told her we’d be in touch with her again soon. Let’s leave it at that for now.’

  They started up the long path towards the gates, soon overtaking the more elderly mourners ahead of them, and as they approached the exit to the cemetery they saw Billy appear. He was walking rapidly, and when he saw them he waved.

  ‘Sir …’ he called out to them as he came nearer.

  ‘What is it?’ Madden raised his voice in reply.

  ‘A message from Bow Street …’ Breathing hard, Billy came up to them. Madden halted, with Helen on his arm. ‘They’ve got a lead, sir.’

  ‘A lead?’ Madden’s voice was calm. But beside him, Helen felt his arm grow tense.

  ‘I don’t have the details. The message came through the radio room at Central. But Bow Street have found a witness. A good one, too. She’s at the station now.’ Billy was still panting.

  ‘Then you’ll want to get down there right away.’ Madden’s response was prompt. ‘Don’t worry about us. We’re going to stop off at St John’s Wood. We’ll find our own way there.’

  ‘No, it’s not that, sir. I can drop Dr Madden off if she likes. It’s on the way. But I thought …’ Billy paused. ‘Well, you might like to come with me.’

  ‘To Bow Street?’ Madden’s surprise was plain.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’ A grin had appeared on the younger man’s face.

  ‘But why …?’ Madden glanced at Helen beside him.

  ‘Because it seems only fair.’ Billy’s smile had broadened. ‘After what you were saying only an hour ago.’

  ‘What I was saying?’

  ‘That it was odds on the man who killed Rosa was following her.’

  ‘Yes …? And …?’ Madden’s gaze was piercing now. Bill
y gave a shrug.

  ‘Well, it seems you were right.’

  6

  Lofty cook shook his head ruefully.

  ‘This is a real stroke of luck, I can tell you.’

  His remark was addressed to Billy, but he spared a glance for Madden, who was beside him.

  ‘It came out of the blue, too. The first I knew of it was a call from Poole. She rang the station to say she was bringing Florrie in. That’s when I phoned the Yard, looking for you.’

  ‘Poole?’ Billy asked.

  ‘That WPC I told you about.’

  ‘The one who responded to the warden’s whistle? The first officer at the scene?’ Billy nodded. ‘I remember now.’

  They were standing in the corridor outside the interview room at the Bow Street police station. Alerted by the desk sergeant, Cook had come out to meet them, shutting the door behind him. If he’d been surprised to see Madden there he gave no sign of it. ‘I heard you were coming up for the funeral, sir,’ he’d said, as they shook hands. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  He’d told them then who the witness was he’d been questioning.

  ‘Florence Desmoulins is the name on her papers, but we know her as French Florrie and we’ve had her on our books since ’thirty-eight. She’s got a pitch in Soho Square, but the night of Rosa’s murder she was in Tottenham Court Road tube station taking shelter after the sirens went off and that’s where she saw her. Saw Rosa.’

  He explained how the streetwalker had come to their notice.

  ‘When we started showing Rosa’s photograph around, Poole made a point of checking with the tarts. It was her idea. She reckons they’re more observant than most.’

  ‘Yes, but why has it taken so long to find this Florrie?’ Billy asked. He and Lofty had lit cigarettes and were dropping their ash on the bare wooden floor. ‘The murder was a week ago.’

  ‘She was off sick for a few days. With a head cold, she says. Poole spotted her this morning shopping in Oxford Street and showed her Rosa’s photo. Florrie said it was the same woman she saw in the tube station.’

  ‘And you’re happy with that?’

  ‘Oh, I think so, sir.’ Cook nodded. ‘Florrie saw her close up.’

  ‘What about this man she says was following Rosa?’

  ‘We were just getting into that when I heard you were here.’ The Bow Street inspector eyed them both. ‘But even from what little she’s told me I’d say he was our bloke. What I suggest is I fill you in first on what happened earlier, how she spotted Rosa, then we’ll go in and get her to tell us the rest.’

  He trod on his cigarette.

  ‘When the sirens sounded the first time, Florrie ran over to the tube station, but they went off again a few minutes later and no one seemed sure at first what it meant, whether it was the all-clear, or what. Actually, it was a false alarm, but people were milling about for a while. Florrie herself was at the bottom of the stairs, trying to decide whether it was safe to go out again, when this young woman went by her. She was carrying something in each hand, just like Rosa was, and as she worked her way through the crowd they came face to face. That’s why Florrie’s so sure it was her. Anyway, she went up the steps, this girl who must have been Rosa, and a few seconds later Florrie followed.

  ‘When she got to the top, Florrie paused, still nervous, not sure whether it was safe to go back to her pitch. The blackout was on, of course, but she could still see the girl who’d gone past her crossing the Tottenham Court Road, heading east, which was the direction Rosa would have taken. Just then there was a disturbance behind her, a lot of pushing and shoving on the stairs, and a man came up, forcing his way through the crowd, obviously in a hurry, not caring who he elbowed. When he got to the top, he looked around, saw Florrie standing there and asked her straight out if she’d seen a girl with a bag in each hand go by.’

  Cook paused, rubbing his nose. He looked reflective.

  ‘Now it seems they had a conversation of sorts, Florrie and this fellow, and although I haven’t got the sense of it yet it’s pretty clear what happened, reading between the lines. She didn’t want him chasing off after some other girl, she wanted to hook him herself: she was thinking it would save her the time and trouble of going back to Soho Square to look for a customer. But if that is what she had in mind, it didn’t work out that way. What happened was he turned nasty.’

  ‘How?’ Billy killed his own cigarette. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know yet.’ Cook had his hand on the doorknob. He looked at them both. ‘But what say we go inside and find out.’

  The door behind them opened and a uniformed constable came in bearing a tray laden with cups of tea. He carried it carefully to the table, set it down, and with a nod to Cook left the room. Billy glanced at his watch. He’d promised Helen to have Madden at Waterloo station by half-past three when they had dropped her off earlier. The possibility of grabbing a bite of lunch had vanished, but they still had some time in hand. Not that there was much point in lingering. They had just about squeezed French Florrie dry.

  Or she them.

  He grinned as he watched the woman seated across the table simultaneously extinguish the cigarette she’d been smoking and refuse the cup of tea Cook was holding out to her with a disdainful gesture. Small in stature, and with sharp, catlike features, she was dressed in a tight blue skirt and a blouse cut to display the tops of her small breasts. Red hair shaped like a cap framed her carefully made-up face, to which she was attending now, applying lipstick and following this with a dab of powder to her nose from a compact she’d removed from her handbag a moment before. Then, having studied the result for several seconds, she snapped the compact shut.

  ‘Eh bien, c’est fini?’

  Billy’s schoolboy French was just about up to understanding her words, though not a number of others she’d used in the course of the description she had just given of her brush with the man who in all likelihood had killed Rosa Nowak, an account laced with epithets and gestures which, though crude, had lent a compelling edge to her narrative. Listening to her, Billy had realized why Lofty was setting such store by her testimony, why he considered finding her such a stroke of luck. An experienced detective himself, he knew it wasn’t often that you came across a witness as observant as Florence Desmoulins; one whose memory seemed so attuned to the finest detail; whose quick green eyes missed nothing. Talents she had no doubt honed in response to the demands of her profession, but no less valuable on that account.

  A case in point was the description she’d given them earlier of the man she’d encountered at the top of the stairs outside the tube station. This was the first question Cook had put to her on returning to the interview room, and Florrie had responded without a second’s hesitation.

  ‘He was not young,’ she had told Lofty. ‘More than forty years, I think. Tall, but not as tall as you. Nor this gentleman.’ Her glance had shifted to Madden. ‘Mais peut-etre comme toi.’

  The remark, which Billy didn’t understand, had been addressed to Cook’s colleague, Joe Grace, one of the detectives sent to Little Russell Street, who was standing with his back to the wall by the door, having given up his chair to Madden. Without warning Florrie had risen and walked over to where he was standing, checked her height against his and then returned to her seat, nodding.

  ‘Comme ca.’ She had gestured with a jerk of her red head. ‘The same.’

  Cook had noted it down as five feet ten inches and then quickly determined that the man’s face and figure had been lean and his hair black and cut short.

  ‘What about his eyes?’ he had asked then, and Florrie had shrugged.

  ‘At night in the blackout all eyes are dark.’ She spoke with an accent, one she might even have exaggerated a bit, or so Billy thought, rolling her rs and saying ‘ze’ when she meant ‘the’. ‘Perhaps you already know zat, Inspecteur.’ Her smile had been half taunting, half provocative, and Lofty had chosen to ignore it, staying bent over his notepad.
r />   ‘And what was he wearing?’

  ‘Wearing …?’ Florrie had considered the question for some time, gazing up at the ceiling as if the answer lay there. ‘A dark coat and a hat is all I remember. He was carrying … how do you call it? A case?’

  ‘A suitcase?’

  ‘Non … plus petite. It was smaller.’ She demonstrated with her hands.

  ‘A briefcase, then?’ Cook asked, and she nodded.

  ‘Exactement.’

  ‘Could he have been a businessman?’

  She shrugged.

  It was then that Cook had asked his witness to describe her brush with the man, and Florrie had launched into a graphic description of their brief encounter.

  ‘I have come up the stairs, oui, I am standing there, and this man, ce connard, he asks me if I have seen a woman carrying two bags.’ She had shrugged. ‘I know who he means, it is the same girl who went past me, but I think maybe he would like to stop and talk, so I make a joke, I say, “What’s your hurry?” ’Her voice took on a droll note. ‘I ask him if he want to spend some time with me. I am being friendly. Tu comprends?’

  Out of the corner of his eye Billy saw a cynical smile flit across Joe Grace’s thin, pockmarked countenance.

  ‘But he only asks again about this girl, where she has gone, and when he speak a second time I change my mind. Even though he is smiling I know this is one I don’t want. So I say, “What’s it to you?” Et sans rien dire il me prend par la gorge, le salaud.’

  ‘What’s that? What did you say?’ Cook struck the table with his fist in frustration. ‘Speak English, damn it.’

  ‘He grab me by the throat.’ Florrie spat the words back.‘Comme ca, tu vois.’ She clutched her own throat. ‘And then he speak, but so softly only I can hear. He say, “Answer the question or I break your bloody neck.” ’

  Flushed in the face, eyes bright, she stared at Cook.

  ‘And I tell you, Inspector.’ Her own voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘This one … he means it.’

  In the silence that followed, Cook caught Billy’s eye.