The Chelsea Murders

by Lionel Davidson

  In the pause the Commissioner said, ‘I’m not quite sure, what the implication –’

  ‘The coloured chap, Artie Johnston, has a big hair style. But he also has a man’s neck. And that’s what’s been altered.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So taking it all together, I don’t see Steve “protecting” him. Similarly on height. Mrs Honey made a particular point that her attacker was very tall and slim. So did Steve. Artie Johnston is six foot one. I think the chap is giving an entirely accurate account of what he saw. Of course, this doesn’t absolve him of collusion – if some strange brand of double-think is going on that we haven’t yet figured. However, if there was an arrangement, it’s hard to see what his contribution can have been. The keys? Perhaps. The costume? Certainly not.

  ‘We can say without any question that he had no way of hiding the costume. From the moment his rooms were searched after Wu’s murder, he has been tailed every moment. There is no way he could suddenly have produced it. Which leaves us with Artie.’

  It also left Warton with the embarrassing story of Artie slipping his tail. He told it poker-face, and heard the heavy silence as he did so.

  ‘Where that leaves us,’ he said, ‘is into the problem of where Artie could have kept the costume. That is, if it was worn. Again, I’ve got to repeat, we only have Steve Giffard’s word for it. If it was worn, we have to ask why. The answer might be either for shock effect, or for protection. The attack, after all, might not have succeeded. The girl might have escaped, to identify him. But if worn, where was it, and where is it?’

  He told of the theories on this front. Artie had carried only a slim note-case when he left home, and had certainly turned up at the hostel carrying just that. His story was that, on slipping his tail, he had gone for a walk.

  Their latest thinking was that he might have an extra rented room somewhere, a place chosen for speedy access. A small item had just been fed to the local press: a low profile story that would not be picked up by the London evenings, but that might bring the right landlady forward.

  ‘However, whatever else he’s got there, it’s very doubtful if he’ll have the money.’

  Wu’s twenty-five hundred dollars, Warton was almost certain, were now in Liverpool. He didn’t think Artie had been foolhardy enough to carry the money with him. He thought he had probably posted it, in one or more covers, and had then gone up to make arrangements for what he wanted doing with it.

  ‘But before going into that,’ Warton said, ‘I’d like to take up what seems to me to be the key aspect. The decapitation. Why he did it. The girl was already dead. He had nothing against her; no reason to mutilate or humiliate her. I made it a priority to get a psychiatric reading of it.’

  The reading was from a government expert who had in his care some dozens of psychotic killers ‘detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure’. He had seen all the evidence, including the notes. His first important finding was that instead of the wild and eccentric individual suggested by the Press, the person they were after was one in a state of over-control.

  ‘Of what?’ the Commissioner said.

  ‘He controls himself beyond the limits normal for him. He gets up a head of steam, and when it gives, he goes over the top. He’s then apparently capable of acting out the most violent fantasies.’

  As he read out the summary, he sensed them picking up the points one by one.

  The decapitation was a responsive act: the Press had earlier depicted a systematic and bloodless ‘genius’. The beheading was both a refutation of this picture and a testing of himself; its public intention to confound and horrify.

  The evidence revealed a ‘basically aesthetic individual, fastidious and well-organized’, but suffering frustration, and anxious to demonstrate his quality. He was of a type quick to believe that ‘people had to be used’, and could swiftly still his sense of guilt at the means deemed necessary to use them.

  His mockery and flouting of the police was unlikely to be a sudden or solitary outburst. His social deviance might already have shown in some other form in police records. His outward characteristics would almost certainly be describable in such terms as ‘generous’ or ‘reckless’.

  ‘I’ll just read his conclusion,’ Warton said. ‘He says, “The factor qualifying all of the above is, however, undoubtedly his state of over-control. He is unlikely to break down under interrogation, whatever impression he may seek to give. You are after a cunning and imaginative liar.”’

  There was a lengthy silence when he had finished.

  ‘What’s your conclusion, Mr Warton?’ the Commissioner said.

  ‘Well, it’s not a bad picture,’ Warton said. ‘With regard to a police record, Artie Johnston is the only one with any form. What struck me particularly was the question of not breaking up under interrogation. “Whatever impression he may seek to give.”’

  He scratched his chin and studied the phrase again.

  ‘He gave me a pretty good impression of breaking up over the matter of the two hundred pounds. Yet he knew he was covered – Colbert-Greer had certainly given him the money. So he was playing with us. Which brings me to the main point.’

  He tidied his papers and replaced them in the folder.

  ‘One part of the problem, at least, is over. While working on it, it looked to us, naturally, as the main one. Finding him. I suspect the real difficulty is just beginning – how to take him. The beggar has caused tremendous havoc, and he’s enjoying it. However, he seems to have got in the way now of pushing his luck. I think, sir,’ he said, addressing the Commissioner directly, ‘that there is one area where he is vulnerable. It’s why I feel bound to ask for some special permissions.’

  The permissions as Warton had judged, raised some difficulties, and he sat out the discussion that followed.

  ‘You don’t think,’ the Commissioner said at last, ‘it would be safest to pull him in on suspicion while you continue with the other steps? I could get you substantial help from other forces.’

  ‘No, I don’t, sir,’ Warton said, putting an immediate stopper on this. He explained again: he wanted the man in the open and in the position of having to take steps himself. When Johnston took the steps, he wanted to react as fast as possible, with no one else in the way.

  ‘Good performance, Ted,’ the C.C. said, taking him on one side as the conference broke up. ‘I’ll try and get you an answer within hours.’

  ‘Within a very few, I hope, sir.’

  ‘It’ll have to go to the Director of Public Prosecutions, perhaps up to Home Secretary. Good show, though.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Warton said.

  He knew it had been good. But he was still troubled, as he went to the car, by the suggestion of other forces. It was an alert, unstable, highly dangerous young criminal he had to take. He wanted no one else involved in the encounter: no ambiguity of signals.

  Rain had begun to gust viciously outside, and he watched the wipers flick there and back, thinking of all that could still go wrong.

  25

  BLOODY Wednesday again; and rain pelting the windows. It occurred to Mooney, nodding and scowling as she wrote, that she’d rarely felt wearier in her life.

  ‘Knitted bootees, eh?’ she said. The clot at the other end was feeding her yet another half-witted scheme for Christmas. She seemed to have dealt with about fifty thousand already. ‘Well, I can’t guarantee it will go in,’ she said, ‘but thanks, anyway.’

  She hung up just as the office boy flung the last roll of proofs in. The elastic-banded scroll whizzed past her ear and fell in the wastepaper basket.

  She could hardly bother with it, but out of old habit reached for the stuff and slipped the rubber band while checking the next item on her list. Fire service.

  She picked up the phone and got on with it, straightening out the clammy proof pages as she did so. She saw that Normanby had finally made it this week. He’d been crowded out by the rising star of Bethlehem and its festival of advertising.

  NEGL
ECTED GENIUS: CHELSEA’S

  ANGER – LONDON’S SHANE.

  Fruity. There was a photo of the house in Glebe Place with diminutive Monty pointing indignantly at it.

  While she dealt with the fire service she flapped over the damp pages. The Week’s Weddings: double spread with blocks in place. Property Notes. Landladies Warned of ‘Artful Lodger’.

  Some solid crud to do with candles and paper decorations was coming out of the fire chief, and she let him go on for a bit, tapping her ballpoint, before realizing what she was reading.

  A young single man who hires rooms and rarely uses them may be passing counterfeit money, landladies were warned …

  ‘Bob,’ Mooney said, a bit breathlessly to the fire chief, ‘it’s actually a bit early for Christmas hazards. May I come back at you nearer the time?’

  She put the phone down and pored over the item.

  Landladies Warned of ‘Artful Lodger’.

  A young single man who hires rooms and rarely uses them may be passing counterfeit money, landladies were warned this week. Police say his pattern of behaviour is to pay a deposit, collect the key, and then appear at infrequent intervals. Cheques have also bounced from this ‘artful lodger’. For their own protection landladies are advised to look in at their local police stations to check out all such hirings of recent weeks.

  Are they now? Mooney thought. In an unfocussed way she’d been groping in that direction herself. So that was the way of it. There was no indication where the story had originated, but she recognized the chief sub’s hand in the ‘artful lodger’. She took the page up with her to the subs’ room.

  ‘Artful lodger, eh?’ she said.

  ‘Like it?’ Sid said, not looking up.

  ‘You old fun-smith, you. Where’s it from, this story?’

  ‘Late phone-in, I expect.’

  ‘I might chase it. Special bouncing cheque offer for Christmas. Have you got the copy?’

  ‘Piss off, love, there’s a good girl,’ Sid said.

  He had his direct-line phone to Dorking lying on the desk, and was rapidly rewriting lines for the stone-hand there.

  Mooney located the copy herself: in the late pile, a phone-in, typed in the office, heavily subbed. At the top it said, Contact Sgt Ackerley, Goshawk Rd.

  Okay, thought Mooney, and descended to her vehicle, beside the advertising department.

  A very unpleasant ride through the rain to Goshawk Road, and a flash of her Press card, produced Sergeant Ackerley.

  ‘Morning, Sergeant. We’re following up the Landlady Swindler. Anything new there yet?’

  ‘What, are you out with that already?’ the man said. He was at his elevenses, and still chewing. ‘We only phoned it in yesterday evening.’

  ‘No, not till Friday. Press day today, though. We might just squeeze in a landlady or two.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got nothing here,’ the sergeant said. ‘It was Lucan Place asked us to put the story out to local papers – they were a bit pushed there. Why not try them?’

  ‘Okay. Thanks,’ Mooney said, and hiked off, at a rate of knots, back to the office, having learned all she needed.

  Within minutes she was flipping through the back numbers. She found the week of Germaine’s death, and turned to the classified ad. pages.

  Accommodation (Furnished).

  Her heart sank at the sight. The Gazette was the landladies’ special, and a good twenty column inches of stuff was on offer; and the same every week since. Still, it had to be in the two or three weeks around then.

  Not least of the reasons for her present dejection was sheer fatigue. Wertmuller, now only a bad dream, had proved not the last of her disasters. After the search of her flat she had shot up to Fleet Street in a fine fury. The police had given no reason for the search but she’d assumed, recalling Warton’s threat, that they were after any unprinted stories for the Evening Globe, with whatever other information she might have: a diabolical infringement of Press liberty! To her surprise, Chris’s interest had been strangely guarded.

  To her still graver confusion, on hearing her offers to reveal more about the notes, he had rummaged on his desk and produced the Famous Residents list.

  ‘You don’t mean this?’ he said.

  Mooney nearly fell off the chair.

  ‘We’ve been nobbled, love,’ Chris told her. ‘There’s a cease-fire on. They give us what they can, and we keep down the flack. We couldn’t even use the railway station stuff.’

  ‘Railway station stuff?’

  ‘Deposit boxes, all over London. Didn’t you hear of it?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Mooney said. It was the first time she had.

  ‘Have you really got anything new?’

  ‘Well, I’m working on it, Chris.’ Mooney swallowed. ‘I have access to a lot, you know. Only I’d be happier with a staff job.’

  ‘I know you would, Mary. And Jack knows. We just can’t hire now. Of course, if you really get anything – who knows? But you’ve got some nice bonuses coming.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ Mooney said, numbly absorbing his last ‘really’, with the related inference that they knew now how she’d fed them the story.

  But he’d told her what they knew, which was roughly what she knew; so she’d gone home and had a good cry and three gins.

  It was with the second gin, which pulled her together, that she had begun slowly to realize that she knew more than they knew. Brenda hadn’t appeared on the list of things they knew.

  Except what the devil had Brenda to do with it?

  Something, evidently. She recalled that in her interview with Warton, only two things had come from his end: one, his piece of bait about the notes; and two, his probing as to her sources other than Brenda.

  He’d questioned Brenda, then. But why?

  She was passing the library next day when Brenda skipped out for lunch.

  ‘Well, my goodness,’ she said with wonderful surprise. ‘That hair of yours is really a knockout.’

  ‘Is it really, Mary? My new bloke says so, too.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Oh, well, octopuses, wow!’ Brenda said, giggling.

  She had a gay and chatty lunch with Brenda, and right afterwards called Frank; and went to see him. Frank would tell you anything.

  What Frank had told her had sent her away reeling, fairly bow-legged.

  The detective’s theory had been transmitted, via Brenda, to three people, all of whose flats had been searched (Frank was interested to hear that it was now four).

  One of these people had to be the person sending the messages.

  She was almost frightened to think of what this meant.

  Frank had mentioned the costume, too; and her own imagination had supplied the rest.

  Costume. Messages. Chloroform. The police had asked about her visit to the laboratory without in any way mentioning chloroform. But Mrs Honey had been chloroformed. Wu had been chloroformed. They had been looking for chloroform; and a costume. They had searched her place, and Frank’s and Steve’s and Artie’s. They evidently hadn’t found any of it.

  But afterwards it had been used on Grooters; so it was still around. Obviously it wasn’t around in any of the places searched. It was around in some other place.

  How the devil did you start looking for the other place?

  It was at about this time that the colossal mental fatigue had set in with Mooney.

  The ‘artful lodger’ story had shown her that others were working on it. But the idea had been dawning on her, anyway.

  Racing rapidly through the Classifieds now, she realized she was slightly ahead of the field. For one thing the story had not yet appeared; it wouldn’t appear till Friday. Apart from the police, she was the only one who realized its significance. And she was also one up on the police. Almost certainly they would already have contacted all advertisers who had given addresses and phone numbers. That left box numbers. Perhaps, as well as feeding the Press this innocent story, they were also trying box n
umbers. If the police hadn’t yet contacted the newspaper to find out the names of advertisers with box numbers, it must be because they didn’t want the newspaper, or any other newspaper, alerted.

  Mooney closed the file and went below to Advertising.

  A nice girl called Pru with straight hair and brown eyes ran the box number department. ‘Hello, Mary,’ said this young lady.

  ‘Now, Pru,’ said Mooney, ‘we all know how clever you are, and all you have to do is show me how clever you are with box numbers. The management wants everyone to know what a terrific pull they have.’

  ‘Easy,’ Pru said, and showed Mooney all about box numbers. She showed her the file and the cards with all the names and addresses of the people who had box numbers, and Mooney thanked her and worked late that night. Everyone had gone before she moved her bike from outside the advertising department.

  26

  AT three in the afternoon Warton got his answer and immediately yelled for Summers. ‘Right! Immunity for Chen – let’s go.’

  They went to Wembley where Mr Chen, under surveillance for some hours, was in his warehouse.

  Mr Chen came with rimless spectacles and a mild manner, and showed no surprise at the visit.

  ‘It’s about Mr Wu,’ Warton said, ‘and the message we received with regard to a sum of dollars he had. You’ll have read about it, I expect.’

  Mr Chen said he had.

  ‘Delicate situation, as we all know. However, our only concern is to find Wu’s murderer. If it’s possible for you to help, I’m sure you’d want to?’

  Mr Chen said that if it was possible he certainly would.

  ‘It has been officially decided,’ Warton told him, ‘to make no inquiries at all into any of Mr Wu’s other transactions. If any turn up, during our work, we can absolutely promise we won’t pursue them. Understand me, Mr Chen?’