A Commonplace Killing - Siân Busby

by A Commonplace Killing (epub)

  “So,” said Lucas, “they came in over there and walked up to the tree; stood here for a while; shared a fag. She removes her drawers, they spread out the mackintosh; she asks him for the money; he tells her she must be joking; they have a bit of a fight; he forces himself upon her and strangles her. And then he took her handbag.”

  Cooper pondered this scenario.

  “Something about it doesn’t seem right,” he said.

  “I don’t know; seems routine to me, sir.”

  Cooper leaned back on his heels and fanned himself with his hat, looking about him all the while for anything else that might supply a clue, the significance of which he had yet to, might never, discern. He stood up and crossed to the remains of wall on either side of the corrugated iron, scratching at the pointing, scraping particles of brick dust with the blunt end of the tweezers into yet another glass phial.

  The little things are the most important, he told himself. Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes had not seen the things he had seen, but that did not detract from the truth of the observation. A blade of grass, a scraping of brick dust, might be all it took to hang a man. It never failed to astonish him.

  Dejection came upon him suddenly. Who was he fooling? Not himself. He was gathering these fragments of information not because he was some sort of latter-day genius of detection, but because he did not know what else to do. That was the unpalatable truth of it.

  “The trouble is,” Lucas said as if reading his thoughts, “a detective needs information, and you know as well as I do, sir, there’s never any information in a case like this. Know thine enemy – that’s what it says in the Bible, isn’t it?”

  “Actually, I think it’s Sun Tzu – The Art of War.”

  “Know thine enemy. That could have been written by a detective. Trouble is, I’m not sure I want to get to know the sort of blighter who strangles a woman with his bare hands. That’s why we’re not up at Scotland Yard, you and I. We’re not cut out for homicide. Our skills lie in other directions – but you’re hardly likely to find out who a murderer is from a friendly nark in exchange for a ten-bob straightener, are you?”

  Of course, Lucas was quite right in all of this. And as is often said, murder is an intimate act: only two people know for sure what took place between them, and one of them is dead.

  Cooper gripped the stem of his pipe between his teeth.

  “All we can do, old chap,” he said, “is follow the procedures and hope to God we don’t miss anything.”

  He called over the fingerprint specialist and watched him collect a set of prints from the dead woman. If she was a tart chances were that her dabs would be on file and then at least they’d have a name.

  Lucas lit a cigarette and took a deep draught, releasing clouds of obscuring smoke from his nostrils.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of Upstairs sending one of their murder experts over, is there, sir?”

  Both tacitly acknowledged the absurd unlikelihood of that. Lucas drew again on the cigarette, coughed, removed it, and contemplated the glowing tip between his thumb and forefinger. Cooper spent a few moments fussing with his pipe, relighting it and puffing away until he was satisfied he would be able to respond in as mild a tone as was possible. Policemen live at the edge of frustration and resentment and it can wear you down, if you let it.

  “I’m afraid we can’t pick and choose which cases we investigate, Frank.”

  “It makes no difference to me, sir, my twenty-five years will be up this time next year, thank bloody Christ – but you’re still young. You still have a career.” Lucas attacked his cigarette: he was laconic in everything he did and said, but he smoked furiously, taking it out on the hapless fag. “You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to know that this one can’t be cracked, no matter how hard you try. Bet you a bob to a bootlace on that. You’d be better off sticking to the racketeers. That’s the way to get Upstairs to notice you. They shan’t thank you for wasting time and money on a commonplace killing – not in the middle of a blasted crime wave.” He smoked the cigarette down to the bitter end, throwing the butt to the ground and grinding it underfoot as if to make sure that it really was dead.

  Cooper bit irritably on the stem of his pipe.

  “Murderers are generally in an agitated frame of mind,” he said. “They do idiotic things – make mistakes.”

  Lucas lit another cigarette.

  “I shall have to let DS Phillips go by six o’clock, sir,” he said. “He’s supposed to be on stake-out over in Enfield tonight.”

  “Keep him here until the light goes. And for God’s sake, get those blasted uniforms out searching the dustbins.”

  8

  She had been standing in the queue for half an hour or more when the woman behind her jabbed her in the small of her back.

  “Shift yourself, why don’t you.”

  A gap had opened up in the line in front of her and she moved into it. She might have said something to the woman but didn’t because she was never rude to people, even in these sparse times when manners and good behaviour seemed to have gone along with so much else. She might have said that, she supposed. She considered turning around, but the moment had passed.

  She had become transfixed by a vast hoarding on the opposite side of the road, an advertisement for Snowfire Vanishing Cream affixed to an exposed end-wall where a cinema used to be. She was wondering whether the line drawing of a woman’s head was supposed to be the actress Pat Kirkwood, and whether actresses were paid in jars of vanishing cream. She couldn’t see the point of advertising things that you can’t buy anywhere. Only available in strictly limited quantities. Ask your grocer to save you some from his next supply. This is produced in complete conformity with the authorised economy standards. It made you sick.

  Her back was killing her, and so were her feet, and she longed to remove her girdle and high heels. She was still just outside of the shade of the baker’s awning; it was still hot. Her blouse was irredeemably stained with perspiration under the arms and when she moved she could feel a cooling patch of damp between her skin and her girdle. She wished she could take off her jacket.

  Queuing is simply not fair, she thought; she had said as much all through the war. Why couldn’t the government introduce some sort of distribution system so that everybody got what they needed – all the same? People shouldn’t have to stand about all day. The woman in front of her was saying: “I knew I should have gone to the ABC on Camden Road”, and she wondered if she’d be better off going there now; then it came to her that the ABC had two women behind the counter and she was probably better off with the baker.

  She couldn’t understand why it was taking so long. A person could die in the time it takes to get served. It was impossible to see inside the shop because the windows had been boarded up since a V-weapon had taken every single pane of glass more than a year ago. A lot of the other shops in the row had been obliterated. She wished she hadn’t remembered that, trying to push away the memory of the greengrocer and his wife scrabbling frantically in the ruins of their shop for the body of their little girl. Pat Kirkwood has such lovely skin, she thought: I wonder how much a pot of vanishing cream goes for on the black market? The advertisements mocked you with the lure of things you couldn’t get hold of even if you had the money and the points. Vanishing cream, Heinz Tomato Soup, French girdles. The list was endless. She supposed that there must be people who had these things in abundance; people who knew other people. It was all luck when you came down to it.

  Across the road another Number 43 came and went. Friern Barnet via Muswell Hill. The sight of it made her nervy. She was a bundle of nerves and in a bath of perspiration. She hoped it wasn’t the Change. She didn’t want any more kiddies – she’d almost died having Douglas – but she was not ready for the Change. Her sex appeal was the only thing keeping her from a shrivelled existence in a dingy bed-sitting room. When she thought of all the things other people got away with, all the things other people had, it made her f
eel ill. Pat Kirkwood and her bloody vanishing cream. She reckoned she had five years left before the Change aged her irrevocably, and after that no man would ever look at her again.

  She rummaged in the pigskin handbag for a gold-coloured compact, dabbing at the line of perspiration on her top lip.

  “Tut! Look at Lady Muck,” said one of the women in the queue behind her, “making herself cheap.”

  She lingered unnecessarily over the blonde curls protruding artfully from beneath the front of her turban. The face-powder sat on her damp skin like a grotesque mask; the mingling of perspiration and rubber filled her nose. She felt queasy, as if she might faint. It was only the tiredness that was stopping her from crossing the road and starting over again. Somewhere nice; somewhere the war hadn’t touched. Who could blame her for that? You had only to look at what her life had come to. Nobody would blame her. Nobody. Not even Mavis.

  Another woman left the baker’s and the whole line moved up one more space and she found herself, at long last, standing in the shade of the awning. She would buy the bread, she would take it home and then she would set about changing her life. Buying the bread would be the last thing she ever did for any of them.

  The thought made her panic; then it made her sad.

  The woman who had just left the baker’s was holding out her basket.

  “’Ere, look at that. Gorn. Look at that.”

  She was a big fat Cockney woman, the sort you used to see in the newsreels standing in front of their bombed-out slums, shaking their fat fists at Hitler as Bob Danvers-Walker said something meaningless about courage and guts. She was toothless, arms like raw sausages, immense bosom like an overstuffed bolster. She was probably only in her thirties but she had let herself go with years of drudgery relieved by hop-picking or whatever women like her did for amusement: stout-drinking, knees-upping.

  “’Ave a look at that,” she was demanding, thrusting out her basket indignantly.

  There was a small split tin and half a dozen buns lying at the bottom.

  “All stale,” she spat. “Rock ’ard.” She tossed her head back towards the baker’s. “’E’s taking fuckin’ liberties.” A few women gasped. The Cockney’s face was blotchy with indignation. “Fobbin’ us off with yesterday’s unsolds! The lousy rotten sod!”

  Muted, apathetic expressions of dismay came from the other women in the queue, but not one of them relinquished her place in the line. After a little while another woman left the shop, armed with, she told them all, half a cottage loaf, four sausage rolls and a few broken jam tarts.

  “I queued over an hour for that,” she said. “It’s disgusting. They get better treated in Germany.”

  “They got better treated in Belsen,” someone else averred.

  She wondered why people talked such rot.

  Once more, they all moved up a place until there were only four women standing between her and the baker’s. The grimy reality of the coal-carts, the drays, the lorries rumbling past her on the Holloway Road played badly on her nerves; the brick dust weighing down the corner of the tattered awning depressing her terribly. Her eyes strayed once more to the other side of the road, the line of red buses standing out against the relentless grey of everything else. A tuppenny bus ride was all it took, but still it was more than she could ever hope for.

  Oh, pull yourself together, do, she told herself. You’re getting on my nerves. Things were getting better. She didn’t expect men to fall like ninepins for her any more – those days were gone – but she still had sex appeal. Nobody would ever believe that she was forty-three.

  After a few more minutes there were only two women in front of her and she could see inside the shop; she could smell the rolls and loaves.

  She smoothed her skirt and adjusted the hem of her jacket, glancing over her shoulders to check one turned calf and then the other. Her seams were perfectly straight. Everything was going to be alright.

  9

  Cooper was scarcely aware of her coming to stand at his side. He had no idea how long she had been standing there, patiently holding out a tray bearing a plate of sandwiches and, amidst an assortment of dirty crockery, an untouched cup of tea.

  “I do hope fish-paste is acceptable, sir,” she said. “It was the nearest thing to a kipper I could find.” He wondered if she was making fun of him. If so, he didn’t mind. He tamped down his pipe with his thumb, slipped it back into his pocket and reached for a sandwich. A train passed below them, coating everything with thick grey smoke, softening the harsh glare of the sun. She coughed.

  “This is hardly the place for a nice girl like you,” he said over the engine rattle.

  She smiled slightly, expertly.

  “I’d drink the tea while it’s still warm, sir, if I were you,” she said. “It’s been standing for a few minutes. You were terribly busy – I didn’t want to disturb you.” She was to be commended for her correctness, he supposed. He was long out of practice where women were concerned.

  “You should have waited somewhere else,” he said. “I could have come and found you, you know. A murder scene – it’s – well, it’s not pleasant.”

  He drank the tea down, washing away the sandwich, and when it was all gone he asked her if there was any chance of another.

  “I’m sure there is,” she said. “The next-door neighbours are very obliging.”

  He set down his cup on the tray, pleased when she didn’t leave immediately. He wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his handkerchief. She was looking at the ground, pensive; her face was slightly flushed, her tawny eyebrows knitted in consternation.

  “You know,” she said at last, “I was in Nairobi with the ATS.” Then without another word, she turned sharply and picked her way across the rubble and the weed patches with her tray of dirty tea things, leaving him wondering what on earth he had said to upset her.

  Lucas had come to stand at his shoulder, fanning himself with his hat.

  “I’ve arranged for a conference at Cally Road, sir, nine tomorrow morning.”

  Cooper thanked him. The DI ran the edge of his hand across his brow and shook a few drops of sweat on to the brown-tipped grass.

  “Shall I let the body go now, sir?”

  “Yes. Yes. I suppose we better had.”

  “Is everything alright, sir?”

  “Yes. Quite alright.” He sighed. “It’s been a long weekend.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Cooper watched the stretcher-bearers lift the body, wrapped in a sheet, and carry it away. The next time he would see her would be in the morgue; the rest of the after-death routine was practical, tedious and best left to Lucas.

  “Sir, I think you’d better take a look at this.”

  Lucas was indicating the spot where, until a few moments before, the woman’s body had been lying, and pointing at the navy-blue raincoat that had been spread out upon the ground beneath her.

  “If I’m not very much mistaken, that’s a man’s mackintosh,” he said.

  Cooper came across and crouched beside the garment.

  “Bag it up,” he said when he had seen enough to know. “I’ll take it back to divisional HQ with me and give it a damn good going over.”

  For the first time that day there was a palpable energy to the murder scene. Lucas called across to Policewoman Tring, who was standing a short distance off bearing another tray laden with yet more cups of tea for the male officers.

  “Girlie, get rid of that tray and take the guv’nor to Stoke Newington straightaway with the samples,” he barked, “and when you’ve done that get yourself back here as quick as you can. I need you to support the men on door-to-door inquiries.”

  Cooper waved his hand dismissively.

  “Oh no,” he said. “I don’t need a lift. Waste of petrol and manpower. I can make do with the Tube. Besides,” he risked a quick glance at her, “Policewoman Tring would be much better used here.”

  Lucas brought his lips together shrewdly, the way he always did whenever he was
about to countermand an order.

  “Do you really think it’s wise to entrust important evidence to the Piccadilly Line, sir?” he asked.

  They didn’t speak much on the drive back to Stoke Newington. The combination of heat and lack of sleep was beginning to get the better of him. He drooped against the side of the open window through which the warm air scarcely moved, thinking of sausages, mashed potatoes and fresh, not tinned, peas. When that became too tormenting he thought of Bach, St John Passion, of the night of sorrow measuring out its final hour, the woman lying in the morgue, the evil men do, the waste, the terrible bloody waste.

  “DI Lucas and the other men are all saying that the chances of catching the killer are next to none,” she said, “and it’s a waste to put so much effort into the investigation.” She swallowed hard. “One of them described it as a commonplace killing. What’s commonplace about a man strangling a woman with his bare hands?”

  He looked out of the window. We’ve just been through a war in which countless numbers perished, he thought; what’s one more corpse on a bomb-site?

  “There are around half a dozen murders committed in London every year that are never solved. An apparently random killing is the hardest case of all to crack. We shall all do our best, of course; but we must be realistic.”

  You had to keep reminding yourself that it mattered: the woman on the bomb-site mattered. They all mattered.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I think it’s bloody awful.” There was a pink tinge creeping up her neck. “You can’t have men getting away with killing women, even if some women do deserve it.”

  He could not ignore the utter sincerity, the heart-rending quiver in her voice, the flush of genteel outrage.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, allowing it all to touch him, “I agree with you.”