‘Here’s how it works,’ Brunnie addressed the three tenants who stood in attentive silence. ‘You cooperate with us and we’ll cooperate with you. The girl who lived in the front room with Mickey Dalkeith. . she’s been murdered.’
The two women looked at each other. Billy Kemp remained expressionless. Brunnie thought their reactions to be genuine. No one displayed any sign of guilt, none overacted in feigned shock or surprise. ‘So work with us and we’ll work with you.’ He paused as he glanced down the hallway and out into the street as a dark-blue police minibus halted at the kerb. ‘OK, here’s your transport. Non-cooperation from you and we’ll turn your rooms over until we find something we can use against you. Give us mucho info and we’ll turn a blind eye to little things like a few spliffs. Is that right, Billy?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘See, I let Billy flush a few things. . in an act of good faith. . and you ladies flushed something when we knocked on the door; there’ll be more to find and we’ll find it if we have to. OK, out into the street and into the van.’
The three residents filed out of the building and Brunnie noted that not one could resist a sideways glance into the gloom of the front downstairs room, and then they stepped out of the house and climbed meekly into the police vehicle and were driven away.
Harry Vicary turned into Claremont Road just as the police minibus drew away from the kerb. He drove his car slowly and parked it at the kerb in the space vacated by the police van. Ignoring the members of the public who stood on the pavement, having noticed the activity at the house, he walked into the hallway and, directed by a constable, into the front room of the house. He encountered a dimly lit room and a musty atmosphere. DS Ainsclough and a slightly built man stood in the room. Vicary noticed the corpse lying on the bed. He also noticed the cluttered and untidy nature of the room, and was unable to tell if there had been a struggle; the room, he thought, could best be described as chaotic.
‘Dr Rothwell — ’ Ainsclough indicated the slightly built young man — ‘the duty police surgeon.’
‘Ah.’ Vicary extended his hand. ‘DS Vicary.’
‘Nice to meet you, sir.’ Rothwell shook Vicary’s hand warmly. ‘Well, I have confirmed life extinct.’ He spoke with a distinct West Country accent. ‘And I think it is suspicious. Contusions to the neck, open eyes. . petechial haemorrhaging. . but that is for the next box, so to speak.’
‘Understood.’ Vicary glanced at Ainsclough. ‘SOCO? Home Office pathologist?’
‘Both requested, sir.’
‘Well, no need for me to remain.’ Rothwell closed his Gladstone bag. ‘I have another call to make. It’s going to be one of those nights. No rest for the wicked.’ Rothwell stepped lightly out of the room and exited the house.
‘Brunnie?’ Vicary asked.
‘Here, sir.’ Brunnie entered the room. ‘Just taken a quick sweep of the house — all the attic rooms seem to have been used for storage. . furniture in the main. So, just three other residents, all taken in for questioning. Detailed search has not yet been done.’
‘I see.’
‘The deceased is believed to be called Gaynor Davies, from Wales. One resident said she was a teenage runaway.’
‘Teenage?’ Vicary glanced at the slight figure. ‘She’d pass for eleven or twelve.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Brunnie spoke softly. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘She was brought back by Michael Dalkeith and she lived here, coming and going as she pleased when he was away, which was for days at a time.’
‘He had a family in Palmers Green, sir,’ Ainsclough said. ‘Wife and two stepchildren. . but kept the rental on this place. . in which he also lived with the deceased.’
‘Sounds like he would have had some explaining to do if he hadn’t lain down in the snow. Two addresses, a female in each address, one of whom is now deceased, and deceased in suspicious circumstances.’
There came a knock on the front door. They stopped talking and glanced towards the door of the room as the constable stepped to one side and said, ‘In here, sir.’
Moments later the squat figure of John Shaftoe bumbled into the room. He smiled and said, ‘Hello, boys.’
‘Sir,’ Vicary replied.
Shaftoe smiled at Vicary. ‘Didn’t think I’d see thee again today, Mr Vicary. No rest for the wicked, eh?’
‘Funny you should say that,’ Vicary said with a wry grin.
‘Oh?’
‘Nothing. . nothing, sir.’ Vicary replied. ‘It just struck a private chord. . The deceased. . female. . life was pronounced extinct.’
Ainsclough checked his notepad, ‘At seventeen fifty-eight hours, sir.’
‘Seventeen fifty-eight,’ Vicary repeated.
‘I see.’ Shaftoe looked at the body. ‘You’re too young to be a customer of mine, pet, far too young. She doesn’t look much older than twelve.’
‘We’re told she is a teenager, sir.’
‘Yes, she could be a finely built thirteen or fourteen, but I’d be surprised if she was much older than that.’ He paused. ‘Strangulation, it seems.’
‘Yes, sir. The police surgeon who has just left said much the same thing.’
‘Have you photographed the corpse?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘I see. . so can’t be moved yet?’
‘No, sir, not overmuch.’
‘If you can turn her over, I can take a rectal temperature. It might help determine the time of death, although time of death is an inexact science at best, really no more accurate than sometime between when she was last seen alive and when the corpse was discovered, but the Home Office like thoroughness. So, I’ll take a rectal temperature and a room temperature, then, frankly, nothing I can do until I get her to the London Hospital. So I’ll do that, undertake the post-mortem tomorrow. Leave you to await the scene of crime officers, and their cameras and fingerprinting kit and whatever.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Vicary despatched Ainsclough and Brunnie to New Scotland Yard. They had reports to write and statements to take from Billy Kemp, Sonya Clements and Josie Pinder. He remained at the scene with three constables and a sergeant.
John Shaftoe, who did not drive, was conveyed to the London Hospital by his driver in a small black car. He went to his office and opened a medical file on the as yet unnamed female found deceased, possibly strangled, in the house on Claremont Road, Kilburn. He locked his medical bag in a secure cabinet and then, pulling on a donkey jacket and a flat cap, he left the hospital by an obscure side entrance and walked into the enveloping darkness of London’s East End. An observer would have seen a low-skilled manual worker, short and stocky, ambling homeward after a good day’s graft, which was exactly the image that John Shaftoe, MD, MRCP, FRCPath, wanted to portray.
He walked by the walls of the buildings, this being a practice he had acquired during his youth in south Yorkshire, where ‘hard’ men who wanted a fight walked close to the kerb, and feeling disinclined to battle his way through what he always thought to be the oddly ill-named rush hour, he called in at a pub and stood at the bar with his foot on the brass rail, enjoying a pint of IPA. Eventually, as often happened, one of the locals came and stood alongside him. The two men nodded at each other. Shaftoe read the man as being an East End villain and even though, at just 5' 4" tall, Shaftoe was as least cop-like as can be, he still had to be checked out.
‘Doing OK, mate?’ the East End villain asked with a smile.
‘So, so,’ Shaftoe replied, avoiding eye contact.
‘Not seen you in here before?’
‘Not been in here before.’ Shaftoe pronounced here as ‘ere’ and before as ‘a-for’.
‘North country?’ the villain explored, pronouncing north as ‘nawf’ and country as ‘can-ry’.
‘Sheffield.’
‘Holiday?’
‘This time of year?’ Shaftoe smiled and allowed himself brief eye contact with his interrogator. He glanced at the TV screen above the b
ar which showed a cartoon film with the sound blessedly turned off. What sound there was in the pub came from piped music and conversation. It was, observed Shaftoe, already crowded for an early midweek evening. ‘No, visiting me sister, she’s been taken badly. . but she’ll be alright. Just came in for a wander, to have a look at London,’ pronouncing have as ‘av’ and London as ‘Lundun’.
‘Alright,’ the wide-boy replied, pronouncing it as ‘or-white’. He then walked back to his mates and said loudly. ‘He’s alright, down from the north,’ and then added pointedly, ‘He won’t be staying long.’ And John Shaftoe, taking the hint, finished his drink and left the pub. Sometimes it was like that. He felt he had to avoid becoming a regular in one particular pub near the London Hospital, because if he did so, his occupation would eventually be discovered and he would no longer be allowed to blend with the other patrons, which was all he wanted to do. He and his wife sometimes just needed to be ‘working class’. So it was that sometimes he walked into a welcoming pub and sometimes he stumbled into a thieves’ den, which was hostile to anyone they did not know. That night he had clearly entered the latter type of pub. He would take note and avoid it in future.
By the time he left the bar of the not so jolly Jolly Boatman, dark had fallen and the rush hour, while still on, had also begun to ease. He took the Metropolitan line from Whitechapel tube station to King’s Cross, and then took an overground train bound for Welwyn. He left the train at Brookmans Park, exited the station via the footbridge and, with his hands thrust into the pockets of his donkey jacket, looking like a coal miner returning home from a shift at the pit, he walked into the leafy suburbs and up Brookmans Lane, which was softly illuminated by street lamps. Large, fully detached houses were situated on either side of the road, many with U-shaped driveways; thus the homeowners avoided having to reverse their cars into the lane. The houses all had generous back gardens, and those to his left backed on to the golf course and thereby afforded even more open space to survey when standing at the rear windows of said houses. He felt himself thinking, aren’t we smug, as he walked. But the smug occupants of these houses were also his neighbours, because although he and his wife liked to drink in working-class pubs ‘to touch base’, they were both disinclined to live on a sink estate and had bought what property they could manage to afford on his salary as a learned Home Office pathologist, and so, working class or not, they had eventually fetched up in ‘smug, self-satisfied’ Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire.
He turned right into one such large house, which had all the front room lights turned on, with a U-shaped drive — though the car by the door was only a modest Volkswagen — and unlocked the front door. He peeled off his jacket as Linda Shaftoe, tall and slender, and, he always thought, holding back the years with admirable success, greeted him warmly. ‘Good day, pet?’ She took his jacket from him as he sat on the bench beside the front door and began to tug at his shoelaces.
‘Busy,’ he said, easing his right foot out of a tightly fitting shoe, ‘busy enough to make me glad to be home.’
‘Well. . good, hot stew in the pot for you.’
‘Champion, pet.’ He eased the other shoe off his foot and reached for his slippers. ‘Champion.’
Harry Vicary surveyed the room. It was, he felt, the room of a lowlife murderer; there was a tangible cheapness of life about the four walls and the space within which reached him, deeply so. He sensed that here, in this room, humanity had little value. The contents, too, were cheap, inexpensive; they seemed to have a careworn, overused, second-hand quality about them. The cluttered room also had a sense of age, as though the contents had been allowed to accumulate over time. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves he began gingerly to open the drawers of the dressing table, ensuring that the police constable then present was watching him closely as he did so. He needed a witness for anything he might find, and also a witness that he did not unlawfully remove anything. He found little of apparent interest: some loose change, a rent book in the name of one Jennifer Reeves, which seemed to be there because no one had thrown it out — the last rent collection entered being some ten years previously. Yet, the clutter in the room suggested to him a longer-term tenant than Michael Dalkeith, who had reportedly moved into the room some twelve months previously. The seemingly long-established musty smell also seemed to speak of a long-term tenant. The owner of the property, as given on the dated rent book, was WLM Rents of Kilburn, with an address in Fernhead Road.
‘Fernhead Road?’ Vicary turned to the constable.
‘Just round the corner, sir,’ the young, serious-minded constable replied. ‘It’s the main road round here.’
‘Ah. . thanks. One to be visited tomorrow.’
‘Sir?’
‘Oh, just muttering to myself. The landlord will be someone to visit; see what he can tell us about his tenants.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Notice anything about the room, constable?’
‘Messy, sir.’
‘Yes. . too messy for someone who has just moved in. .’
‘Now you mention it, sir. Confess I hadn’t read that.’
‘These things you will learn, these observations you will be taught to make.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And a deceased female also.’
‘So I believe, sir, but I came just now, sir, just as the body was being removed.’
‘Yes, I know. . but no female clothing. I haven’t looked in all the drawers yet, but I’d still expect to see a woman’s coat or pair of shoes. . something like that.’
‘Yes. . or a handbag, sir.’
‘Yes. . good observation, no handbag either. Runaways are unlikely to have a handbag but only unlikely. . so it’s a good observation. The door was locked. . easily forced but still locked; no one had come in and rifled the room. Sorry, just musing again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He brings the girl in, brings her from somewhere. . strangles her, takes all her clothing and her handbag, and heaven only knows what else. . and then goes for a walk on Hampstead Heath in a blizzard. . and does so ill-dressed for the weather conditions on that day or night, or whenever, and then lies down in the snow to sleep his final sleep right on top of a corpse that was already there, and had been for a number of years.’
‘You mean like he knew it was there, sir, like he was leading us there, sir? Telling us about the corpse?’
Vicary looked at the constable and did so with widening eyes and a slackening jaw.
TWO
WLM Rents occupied the ground floor of a house on Fernhead Road, Kilburn. Vicary had never before set foot in Fernhead Road. It was a narrow road, he found, probably wide enough to accommodate vehicular traffic in the late nineteenth century, when the tall, elegant terrace houses which stood on either side of the tree-lined road were built, but now, in twenty-first-century Britain, it would, Vicary thought, be a bottleneck during the rush hour. He walked into the office of WLM Rents and was met by a bright, airy interior, smelling of air freshener, with large colour photographs of London landmarks — Trafalgar Square, the Tower, Westminster Bridge — attached to the walls. A water dispenser, filled with mineral water, stood in the corner by the door. Comfortable looking upholstered chairs lined one wall and in front of them were two coffee tables standing end to end, upon which lay copies of London Life, Time Out and other magazines about living in London and the Home Counties. Upon Vicary and Brunnie entering the premises, a young man, dressed in a suit and tie, stood smartly, smiled and said, ‘Good morning, gentlemen. How can I help you?’
‘Police.’ Vicary showed his ID.
‘Oh.’ The man, J.J. Dunwoodie by the nameplate on his desk, paled. ‘No bother, I hope?’
‘Plenty.’ Vicary smiled. ‘Always, always, always plenty of bother. . no shortage of bother at all, keeps us in gainful employment, but we are here only to seek a little information.’
‘Of course.’ Dunwoodie indicated two easy chairs with wooden arms that stood in front of
his desk. The officers took a seat, and only when they were seated did the young Dunwoodie also sit. He was, thought Vicary, a young man who seemed conscientious and took his job very seriously, although working for a private landlord would, he mused, offer limited potential for advancement and would not have the generous conditions of the service enjoyed by public or civil servants. He said to himself, ‘You can do better than this, young Dunwoodie. Much, much better,’ but he said aloud, ‘We understand that WLM Rents owns a property near here, specifically on Claremont Road, by the railway, particularly number 123; can’t forget that house number. Very convenient.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You seem to know it?’ Vicary noticed Brunnie take his notepad from his coat pocket and a pen from the inside pocket of his sports jacket.
‘Yes, I do, I know it well, but it is not typical of WLM Rents.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh, not at all, WLM is more upmarket than 123. We rent to young, professional people. Number 123 is one of our ancillary properties.’
‘Ancillary properties?’
‘It will be developed soon, when Mr William is ready. It has been an ancillary property for a year or two.’
‘And you have permission from the local authority to use it as business premises?’
‘Yes, all legal and proper. It was derelict and Mr William negotiated the change on the deeds as part of the condition of undertaking its development. It was a real eyesore; in fact an oak tree was growing up from the basement. So the local authority was pleased when someone was prepared to take on the renovation. It gave Mr William a bit of leverage you might say, to negotiate the change to the deeds.’
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