“Good,” said Greenaway, his eyes travelling around the entrance of the shelter. Loose mortar lay all over the place, fragments of which could easily find their way into the tread of a boot or shoe. He picked out some sample bags from his kit; he’d need to bag some of that up for evidence. And this …
Her watch had stopped at one o’clock. But when Greenaway lifted her wrist, it began to tick again.
“Ted.” Another shadow across the doorway, and the voice of Detective Chief Superintendent Fred Cherrill, Head of the Yard’s Fingerprint Division, a hangdog face under a bowler hat, regarding him with solemn brown eyes. Greenaway was glad to see those familiar, morose features. His comrade’s mind was an encyclopaedia of villainy rendered in lines and whorls, prints more vivid than any mugshot to him. Despite his senior rank, he insisted on always working murder scenes himself and nothing escaped Cherrill’s gaze. If this killer was somebody they already knew, he would be indexed in Fred’s mental rogues’ gallery. If he wasn’t, the DCS would find a sure-fire way of putting a noose around his neck.
“Fred.” Greenaway got to his feet, short stabs of pain in his knees as he rose from the concrete floor. They shook hands and Greenaway stepped back outside, exhaling the bitter aroma of death from his nostrils as Cherrill set up his powerful crime-scene lamp and went immediately to work.
Greenaway’s eyes roamed up and down the street, and on to the bare branches of the trees in Regent’s Park behind them, stark against the sleeting sky, and the barrage balloons that hovered over them all, like great grey elephants somehow floating in the air. Around him, workers hurried along with their heads down, wrapped and muffled up against the cold. Greenaway wondered if this Johnny could possibly be amongst them, if he was the type who liked to come back and hover around his masterwork, as the boastful arrangement of the woman’s gloves suggested he might. Without thinking about it, he lit a cigarette.
Inside, Cherrill crouched down beside the body, raised his magnifying glass.
Greenaway turned a slow circle, taking in a 360-degree mental snapshot of the terrain and everyone within it. Then he fished his notebook out of his pocket, jotted down his first impressions and all the questions that sprang to mind. Finally, dropping the butt of his cigarette into the gutter, he turned his gaze back into the shelter.
“Anything?” he asked.
Cherrill, seemingly lost in his inspection, said nothing for a while. Then he looked up, eyebrows raised. “Seems to have been a left-handed job,” he said, nodding.
“Chief Inspector, sir.” Another constable approached Greenaway, an older man in the uniform of a reservist, a pair of bottle-thick glasses resting on a nose threaded with red veins.
“Stokesby, sir, Marylebone Lane – the gaffer said I should report to you.”
“Oh, yes, constable?” Greenaway took in greasy grey hair, spots of egg on the lapels of a jacket shiny with wear.
“I was on Number 13 beat last night, that is to say, Marylebone Road, Baker Street, York Street, Seymour Place and here.” Stokesby waved a notebook earnestly.
“Right,” Greenaway opened his own again, licked the end of his pencil, “and what did you see here, constable?”
“Nothing,” the reservist replied. “Well, nothing suspicious, any rate. I passed by here first at 11.30 and I always take a look inside. I did last night. I shined my light up and down, but didn’t see anyone in the shelters at all. Well, there weren’t any call for it, was there? I think if anyone had been lying on the floor round about then, I would have noticed them.”
Greenaway watched the darting little eyes behind the magnifying lenses. The reservists were usually retired policemen, but he wondered how much worse things could get for a force strained by the departure of so many younger men to the war, if myopic volunteers were all that were left to do this kind of legwork. “Did you hear anything, then, any sounds of a quarrel, a fight?”
“Nothing unusual, sir,” Stokesby scratched his head. “It was a very quiet night, last night, not many people about. No moon neither. It was very dark out here. But … what people there was about were soldiers. Four or five times I got asked where the Church Army Hostel was, so I directed them to Seymour Place.” He flapped his arm for emphasis. “Got called over to Baker Street just before midnight, reports of some shady types coming in and out of a doorway. Well, they must have pushed off before I got there, no sign of any breaking and entering on the premises. Took me lunch from 1.15 to 2.15, and I must have passed by here two or three more times during the night.” Stokesby shrugged. “Still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
“No vehicles parked up here?” Greenaway suggested. “Or any driving away?”
“None that I recall. I didn’t see a sentry on duty either,” Stokesby looked as if he had surprised himself with this last remark. “Well, like I say, sir, it was very dark.”
Greenaway closed his notebook. “Thank you, constable,” he said. “That was very helpful. Give my regards to your gaffer, won’t you?”
The throbbing in Greenaway’s head was more insistent now. He rubbed his temples, hoping for it to clear. Watching Stokesby shambling away in the direction of his station, he felt acutely aware of his own years. Greenaway was a veteran of the last war, who’d taken his skills as a radiographer from the Navy to the Met and risen swiftly up the ranks, thanks to his luck on the racecourses. Swaffer had been right about his ambiguous feelings towards this new role on the Murder Squad.
The men that worked the rackets he could understand. He had grown up with them, after all, knew exactly how their calculating, chancy minds worked and therefore how to deal with them. Takes one to know one, maybe. But this pointless death, this brutal, ugly end of a woman who had managed to survive Christ knows how many air raids before she ended up dead in a shelter on a night when there were no bombs, how could he get into the mind of a man who did things like that?
“Excuse me, Chief Inspector,” the younger PC broke into his thoughts. “We’ve located the lady’s handbag, sir. It was just round the corner, on Wyndham Street.”
Greenaway looked down at the constable’s gloved hands which held the remains of a black handbag treated much the same way as its owner – left wet, torn and empty.
“Fred,” he called to Cherrill. “Something else for you here.”
Cherrill, only a few years Greenaway’s junior himself, stooped his way out of the shelter. He appraised the sorry artefact with a frown.
“Doesn’t look like I’ll be able to get much out of that,” he said. “But we’ll see what comes up when it’s dried and dusted. I’ve done all I can here, better get her over to Spilsbury, now, see what he makes of it. Poor old boy,” Cherrill added to himself. “I don’t suppose he’ll like it much. What’ll you do now, Ted?”
Greenaway snapped his notebook shut. “Go house to house,” he said. “Try and find out who she was first, what she might have been doing here. And who she might have been knocking about with.”
Cherrill nodded. “Well,” he said, “we’re looking for a left-handed man, I’m sure Spilsbury will confirm it. Good luck, Ted.”
“And to you,” said Greenaway. “Hope you find him before I do.”
For his own sake, he added, mentally.
4
THE MOOCHE
Monday, 9 February 1942
The dull afternoon light did not penetrate the windows of the first-floor rooms of 153 Wardour Street. The windows themselves, hanging in their frames like the bleary eyes of a heavy drinker amid a sagging façade of shell-shocked masonry, were covered with the accumulated dirt of so many bomb blasts that the sun would have had a difficult enough job even on the brightest of days. But this was not the reason for the dim aura of the room occupied by Mrs Evelyn Bettencourt, or, as she preferred her friends to call her, Nina Oakley, this Monday afternoon. Nina had drawn the blackout curtains early in order to best facilitate the atmosphere necessary for the services of her friend and confidante, Madame Arcana.
Madame �
� or Flo, as she was known by her fellow expatriates in the community that dwelt around Berlemont’s pub in Dean Street – was a petite woman in her thirties, who dressed in black astrakhan and a flamboyant red hat with a feather in it. Thus she announced her profession as an occultist: palms and tarots read, fortunes told, spiritual assistance given for 1/6 an hour – a little above the average rate, but, as Madame would impress upon you the first time you met her, holding your hand tightly with red-manicured fingers and gazing with a solemn intensity through a pair of huge, black eyes, that was because she had studied under Madame Blavatsky herself, as a young girl in Paris.
Very few of her clients, including the peroxide blonde sitting next to her, had insight enough to realise that, were this to be true, Madame Arcana would have had to have been at least sixty years older than she appeared to be. Perhaps, even if they had, they might have put it down to awe-inspiring magical powers, for very few of Madame’s regulars were ever disappointed by her.
Nina had been seeing her on and off for some months now, since she had first made her acquaintance in the aforementioned hostelry one slow October evening. At first it had been the crystal ball Madame had consulted through, but today, because she was anticipating a change in her luck, Nina had asked her to read her cards.
Nina drew from the Marseilles Tarot by flickering candlelight, while a lump of Indian incense, bought especially from the Atlantis Bookshop, smouldered in the ashtray. Even the most amateur of readers would have found the three cards she chose a challenge, but Madame was skilled enough in psychology not to let her dismay at the chaos she saw revealed transmit itself to her client.
“Tell me,” she said, lifting her head, “how was your husband when you last saw him?”
Nina, who had fled to London six years previously, to escape the life of a Lancashire poultry farmer’s wife, gave a resigned sigh before she answered. Her trouble, as she had often confided to Madame before, was that her husband still paid her regular visits, always hoping – yet never bold enough to actually ask – that they might be reconciled.
“My Harry?” she said. “He was all right, I s’pose. Same as he always is. Oh, he’s a good man right enough, he’s kind, considerate, goes to church on Sunday; he’s just—” she shrugged, pursing lips around which the first little fissures of middle-age were beginning to show, “boring. You’ve no idea what it’s like trying to make a living out of chickens, love. They smell bloody rotten, they make a right flamin’ row and they fix you with their evil little eyes all the time. I’d sooner face Hitler …”
Madame shook her head curtly. “I assure you, you would not,” she said.
Nina blushed, remembering too late from whence Madame had fled. “Eee, I’m sorry, chuck, I let me mouth run away with us sometimes. No, course I wouldn’t. But what are you talking about Harry for? You know I’ve not changed me mind about him. I thought you were gonna tell us some more about my Canadian …” Nina’s expression took on a simpering air and she wriggled in her seat, the patched and faded eider-down she had placed on top of her single bed.
Madame looked back down at the third, most damning card in the sequence. What she wanted to say and what Nina wanted to hear were two separate things that her mind strained to reconcile.
“Your soldier friend,” she began to recall their previous conversations. “This is why I ask. You said you were going to introduce him to your husband, no?”
This was not a course of action Madame would have advised, but advice was not really what Nina sought from her. She paid her shilling and sixpence mainly just to air her bewildering plans aloud to someone who was obliged to listen.
“Oh, aye.” Nina shrugged. “Well, they got on all right, I s’pose. Nowt Harry could do if he didn’t like it, is there? But leave off about him now, will you, love? Tell me about my Joe. Is he gonna sweep me away to Canada once all this is over?”
Fortunately, Madame was saved from pronouncing on the likelihood of this by the loud arrival of Nina’s neighbour, whose room was separated from the one they were in only by a pair of wooden doors acting as a shutter. There was a banging, followed by a mewling, as one of the doors came ajar and a huge tabby cat came barrelling through it and pounced upon Nina’s knees.
“Hello, Bertie!” Nina greeted the animal effusively, stroking it as it padded around in circles on her lap. “Is that you, Ivy?” she called. “Come through and meet a friend of mine.”
Madame’s gaze turned to the door. The woman who stood there resembled some kind of ageing variety turn, wearing a fur coat that appeared to have been fashioned from a succession of Bertie’s predecessors and a felt Stetson hat. A cigarette protruded from the corner of her mouth and she spoke without removing it.
“Hello, ducks,” she said, the fag beginning to droop as her eyes travelled from Nina to the extraordinary creature sat beside her on the bed, with her scarlet hat and piercing, coal-black eyes. To Ivy, Madame looked just like a witch and it was all she could do not to cross herself.
“Ivy, this is Madame Arcana,” said Nina, waving her hand and then returning her attentions to the tabby on her lap, who had made himself comfortable and was now sizing Madame up with a hostile green-eyed glare to rival that of his mistress.
Madame gave Ivy a curt nod before turning back to her paying client. “Nina,” she reminded her, “our time is almost up for today.”
“Oh, course, silly me.” Nina gathered the cat into her arms and stood up. “Sorry, love,” she said to Ivy. “Can you take him? I’ll not be more than five minutes, then I’ll make us both a brew.”
Ivy nodded, took the furry bundle from Nina’s arms and left, closing the door behind her as firmly as the landlord’s woodwork skills allowed. Madame thrust the cards back into the pack as quickly as was dignified, snapping her handbag shut over the top of them.
“What were you saying, now, love?” Nina sat back down on the bed. “He’s gonna take me away to Canada, was it?”
“Nina,” Madame looked into the hopeful, smiling face of this woman who had come to London to make her fortune on the stage and had spent the past six years sliding further away from the variety theatres to hostess clubs and bottle parties and finally the streets around her. A silly woman, many would judge, who stubbornly refused to give up her dreams of stardust and handsome leading men, but who nonetheless had survived all the knocks her aspirations had taken along the way and still managed, in the candlelight, to retain her handsome features and her sense of hope. A face which seemed to Madame as wholesome as a freshly baked loaf of bread. A wave of sympathy rushed over the fortune-teller and with it came the loosening of her tongue.
“If you would just listen to me, for once, please take some advice.” Madame took hold of Nina’s hand as a puzzled expression crossed the blonde woman’s features. “I don’t want you to go out with any more servicemen,” she said. “In fact, it would be better for you if you went back with your husband now, at least until the war is over. You know I don’t like to give advice that is contrary to your hopes, but believe me, it is for the best.” She gave the hand a squeeze. “There are worse things than chickens out there, ma cherie.”
Nina’s mouth fell open. “Well,” she began, shaking her head, “I don’t know what to say …” Then a change came across her features and she pulled her hand away. “Has he put you up to this?” she said, scowl lines appearing on her forehead.
“Quoi?” Madame was thrown. “What do you mean?”
“Harry,” said Nina. “Has he told you to come here and say this? Did he pay you?”
“No, of course not, where ever did you get that idea from?” Madame sprang to her feet. She had never seen an enraged Nina before. Luckily, her client had crossed Madame’s palm with silver before the session began and, equally fortuitously, Madame had chosen to sit on the side of the bed that was nearest the door.
“’Cos that’s all you’ve bloody talked about,” Nina glowered over her. She was at least a foot taller than the little Frenchwoman. “Him and h
is flamin’ chickens! Even if it’s not, what right have you to tell me what to do and who to see?”
Madame stuffed her handbag firmly under her left arm. Her eyes flashed, defying the other woman to come any closer.
“Nina, you asked me to read your cards for you and that is what I have done. If you don’t want to take my advice, you don’t have to. But I can assure you,” she stepped backwards, feeling behind her with her right hand for the doorknob. “I have never so much as met your husband. I cannot be paid to do anything so despicable as you suggest and I will not stand being treated like this.”
“Is that right?” Nina jutted her chin. But the anger was cooling in her almost as quickly as it had ignited, replaced by a feeling of despair. She had been so sure Madame would tell her that a new future awaited her in Canada. Even though it was better than the farm, the life she had here was taking its toll on her.
“I’m sorry, chuck,” Nina said, sinking back onto the bed. “Don’t mind me, I just …” She twisted her hands, as if wringing out an imaginary rag. “I’ve just got too much on me mind, that’s all. You go, I’ll be all right.”
“If you are sure?” Madame was caught between the remnants of her sympathy and the urge to flee.
“Be seeing you,” Nina said, turning her head away.
– . –
Next door, sitting at her kitchen table, Ivy tried to keep her eyes on Swaffer’s column in the Herald. But she couldn’t help overhearing the conversation taking place between Nina and her strange little friend. She reached in her drawer for her rosary beads and didn’t put them down again until she heard the fortune-teller leave.
5
PAPER DOLL
Tuesday, 10 February 1942
“Bleedin’ nice, ain’t it?” Lil flopped back in the hairdresser’s chair, rolled her unmade-up eyes at the ceiling. “My local bogey stops me on the way into work last night, tells me to be up bright and early for Bow Street in the morning; my turn on the rota, he reckons. Then he goes and invites himself in for a cuppa Rosie, scares off all my regulars clomping up the stairs in his size ten boots and makes himself at home in the kitchen with Duch – all before I’ve even had time to make a couple of quid. Talk about being a lady of easy virtue,” she huffed on. “I ain’t seen nuffink easy about it yet.”
Without the Moon Page 3