We were walking downstairs by this time. There was a uniformed copper posted in the street, and I asked him to get through for a vehicle to collect what was upstairs and take it to the morgue.
‘Well,’ said Cryer, ‘there’s some almighty mess stewing away there somewhere. We keep trying to get an interview – nothing doing.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘but let me know anything you pick up.’
I looked around me in the street. After what I had been looking at, it was good to be outdoors again. It was a clear evening, with a red cloud like something mad out of a stripper’s hat drifting above the Thames. ‘That looks a fair old pub on the corner opposite,’ I said to Cryer, ‘let’s go and have a drink there. You’ve certainly earned one.’
He said he didn’t feel like it, but I insisted, and he looked better when we had settled down in there. It was clean, it was normal, and the real wooden tables smelled of polish; it was one of those pubs you just come across where straightforward people are having a drink after a day’s work. It made me feel better just to sit and watch them play darts. It made me feel as if I had been let out of hell.
I got him a large scotch and watched while he drank it. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘I’m fine again. But I’ve got to admit, I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘I’m four years out of university,’ said Cryer. ‘It’s time I grew up.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m just going to phone the paper.’
‘Take your time,’ I said. ‘Ease down.’
He was gone a while. When he came back he said: ‘Well, they’ve cleared the front page for it.’
‘I should think so,’ I said. ‘Well done.’
‘Why well done? It’s a story any paper would put on page one.’
‘Yes, but you had to get it,’ I said. ‘That’s why well done.’
‘That’s the job, getting it.’
‘How long have you been with the Recorder?’
‘Eighteen months.’
‘If you’re still the way you are now in five years’ time,’ I said, ‘you might go a long way. You stood up well to what we saw just now; I can think of older men who would have run for it, freaked out.’
‘I can’t do that,’ he said seriously. ‘Angela and I need the money too badly and there are three million folk on the dole. I’m from the Midlands and I’m a working-class lad – not that I insist on that. But it’s like my dad says – us gets in there and us keeps trying.’
‘Drink up,’ I said. ‘Fancy a nibble? It says they do a snack.’
‘It’s too soon, I’d spew it up.’
‘Put the worst of it out of your mind,’ I said, ‘and drink, it’ll do you good. I’ll get us a lift back.’
‘I live right out at Wembley.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘I know a minicab firm that owes me so many favours, a fiver’d take you to the moon and all the way back to your front door.’
I rang for the car and as we were leaving Cryer said to me: ‘You know that business you were on about before, what you were asking about, the defence ministry?’
‘Yes, I’ve been asked to keep an eye out.’
‘Well, I don’t know, but do you remember reading not long ago that we expelled a whole mob of Russians from their place over there at Highgate?’
‘That trade delegation of theirs?’
‘That’s the place. Well, it’s only a rumour, and don’t quote me because I could get in diabolical bother, and besides, it’s probably not even true.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m sticking my neck out here. I asked a few questions and told my boss on the paper, and he told me to forget the answers.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ I said. ‘Don’t think I’ll name you anywhere, I won’t.’
‘Well,’ said Cryer, ‘here goes then, for what it’s worth. It seems possible that whatever’s stewing over at the ministry and the expulsion of these Soviets may be connected. It’s one of those rumours that just won’t keep quiet in Fleet Street, and you know what that can mean.’
I did know what it could mean. But I didn’t much like the idea of what it was I didn’t know.
10
There used to be dignity in life; I used to see it all round me when I was young. But now it’s gone. People no longer care about each other the way they used to – not the way my old man used to tell me life was when he worked in the Fire Service during the war and the bombing. Then, people who didn’t even know each other would go down into the flattened buildings after a raid and shovel to get at the people buried down there as if the victims were their brothers. Even after the war there was still some trust left; it ran on nearly into the Sixties. But now it’s all sorry, squire, don’t want to know.
It was the afternoon of Hitler’s birthday, April 20th, 1979, that Edie pushed our little girl under the bus; and when I went to bed that night at my horrible flat at Earlsfield after leaving Cryer I saw her, as I often do in my dreams, her flushed face flying backwards from me in a great wind as I try to catch her, and then I woke and thought I saw her like a flame on the end of my bed.
I’ve heard that abroad people believe the British are cold; it isn’t true. No bullet can deliver you into an agony like lost love; yet neither can the great power of innocence be put out. Such sweetness can be mishandled and ignored – but Dahlia always gets through when she wants me, calling: ‘Daddy? Daddy? Are you all right, Daddy?’
Great living Christ!
Yes, there used to be dignity in life, and I would die if I thought that would bring it back. I often wonder what people think a police officer is and how he thinks, or whether they believe he thinks at all. They just see the helmet, or the warrant card, and trouble. But we take risks. Some of us go into places because we must, whatever’s waiting there. I would give my life to have my little girl back again, but all I can do in the anticlimax that life is without her is to do what I believe to be right in the face of evil. So old-fashioned! But I have only dreams and memories of my daughter to fall back on now – dreams where I see her like a bird, flying free and happy in the face of my trouble.
Yes, I used to pick her up and sing to her before I had to leave and report for duty – at Old Street, that was. But I never managed to protect and love her as I should have because I was too anxious for my career. So now I feel the arms of others round me in the place of her arms, and know that, because of my ambition, I went off to work that day and so let Edie kill Dahlia because I was too proud ever to admit to myself that I knew Edie was mad.
11
‘Have you got anything?’ I said. I was in the morgue.
‘Yes. It wasn’t easy, though.’
‘Police work never is,’ I said, ‘not if it’s done properly.’ I was talking to the snide young pathologist I usually got.
We were in the cold room with its tiled walls and smell of formaldehyde.
‘You really are an awkward bastard, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t be any good if I wasn’t.’ I was still thinking how I used to pick Dahlia up and hold her in my left arm while I threw darts at the old cork board Edie and I used to have in the kitchen.
‘Another dart! Oh please, Daddy, please!’
She was the life I had made, and I felt her beside me now bright even in the face of her mother’s brooding intensity which never frightened her. I felt her with me here in the morgue; I found myself remembering, I don’t know why at that moment, how I used to take her to the football matches I played in those days, at weekends, leaving her with the other wives.
But the young doctor had lit a Gauloise: ‘We’ve found it was done with a humane killer,’ he said. ‘Unusual, that – not the sort of weapon you expect to find used on a person.’ He yawned; some of it was fatigue.
‘Well, the funny thing about murders is that they are unusual,’ I said. He made me angry, because there were times when I wondered why I bothered to clear up shit that always repeated itself, onl
y to be faced with cynicism and remote-control emotion.
‘Calm down, sergeant.’
I barely heard him. My daughter was still in my mind. The window was open in the sitting room of our third-floor flat and she was leaning out. I waved at her as I left for work that last time and she waved back and called out: ‘Don’t be long, Daddy! Come back quick! I love you!’
‘And then he was boiled,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Amazing.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was thorough, wasn’t it?’
‘I just don’t understand you people,’ said the pathologist, ‘you’re all cold-blooded. To look at you mob, anyone’d think I was talking about the weather.’
‘You’re just as bad,’ I said.
‘That comes from seeing too much of it,’ he said bitterly.
‘Change your job.’
‘I’ll ignore that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I suppose he was a criminal.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he’s made mistakes. We all do it.’
He thought about that. Then he said: ‘As a matter of interest, can you make any sense of it yet?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘It’s early on and I’ve got some more checking to do. But it won’t be a long list, only a few names – perhaps fewer than that. The fact it was done with a humane killer’ll be a help.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it marks the man who did it,’ I said. ‘When you’re as deep into murder as I am, you come to realize that every crime is signed by the pettifogging care of the killer. The more careful he tries to be, often the easier it is to trip the bastard up.’
‘We try to take a humane view of murder these days.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘I hope you concentrate on the victim, not the killer.’
He coughed.
There were two kinds of humane killer, I mused. There was the old-fashioned type where a thing like a nail was detonated by a small-calibre cartridge, usually a four-ten. But you don’t see many of them now. The new kind works with compressed air. It hardly makes a sound; you can buy one easily. No serial number, no record at all. You’ve just started up in the butchery trade, let’s say, and you’ve got your own cattle out in the country; you want to slaughter your beasts yourself. Any wholesaler that supplies the trade – a high-class ironmonger even – will sell you what you want. No register to sign, no permit required, no one’s to know.
‘Still, he might as well have used a knife,’ the pathologist was saying.
‘Well, he might,’ I said, ‘but not on a contract. You don’t want any mess, do you, and you know what a knife death’s like. You’ve seen plenty of them; it’s like the day Father papered the parlour. Also, doctor, supposing you were mad – so mad that you enjoyed doing the job with a weapon that you had so carefully worked out to be untraceable in your weird little mind that it made you stick out as neatly as a sore thumb?’
‘All right – I’m following you.’
‘Yes, well then, that’s the signature of the man. And what a signature! It’s intended to be anonymous: yet it’s completely original! The man’s a villain, I’m sure of that. He’s a villain because he planned it all out. He planned it out because he was doing it for money. No money, no incentive. No incentive, no planning. But – you have to be mad to take a life for money. A psychopath. All right, then. Now, how many people would you say in this country filled that bill? He’s no raving nut like, say, Fred Paolacci; he doesn’t go strolling about on the manor with blood all over him. No, no. I bet you wouldn’t spot this little monster if he were standing next to you on a Circle Line train. White, neat and prissy – and very tough, very mad.’
The pathologist went to answer a bleeping phone. When he came back he said: ‘Multiple car smash on the A4 at Chiswick roundabout, there’ll be three to stay.’ He looked pointedly at the clock on the wall. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’
‘That makes a refreshing change,’ I said. ‘They’re usually not that speedy over picking up the dead.’
‘I’m going to be busy,’ said the pathologist. ‘I’m on my own, the chief’s on holiday. Two of them are completely jammed together like Siamese twins. Boy and a girl.’
‘They may have been in love.’
‘Well, they’ll always be together now,’ said the doctor. ‘I won’t get them apart. No need for me to detain you, sergeant. Anything else I get, I’ll let you have it.’
‘I’ll take to the streets again, then.’
‘Do that,’ he said coldly, ‘and try and keep better order in them, will you, it’ll save me a lot of work.’
12
I went up to Room 205. I hadn’t got a pen in there, as usual, so I looked round the open door of Room 206. Nobody was in, so I nicked the pen I saw on the desk. Then I sat down at my own desk and found some paper. I seldom use paper; the sheets I found were turning yellow at the edges. I sat staring at the opposite wall, which was decorated with an ancient poster showing a dog with its teeth bared and a slogan warning the public against rabies. After an hour I tried to write a single name down on my sheet of paper, only to find that my ballpoint had no ink. It didn’t matter. I rang downstairs to the basement and asked for a file.
When it came up I spent a long time gazing at an army photograph. The soldier’s uniform was beautifully pressed, with knife-edge creases down the sleeves; on the right arm you could see his stripes. After a little reading I understood why he wasn’t going to keep those. The face under the red beret stared at me calmly. Young. Peaceful-looking. Friendly.
Balls.
I read carefully through the file, turning back frequently to verify this or that. I began with the man’s birth – Coleraine, County Londonderry, 20 March 1950. No parents’ address, no next of kin. Joined the forces June 1968. Parachute regiment. There were copies of his army records – training, company commander’s assessment, commanding officer’s remarks. Defaulter’s sheet, crime sheet blank.
Until.
Until I liked it. The more I read, the better I liked it. Under the heading Previous Employment I saw that before joining the army he had worked casually in restaurants after coming to the mainland, first as a butcher’s assistant in Birmingham, then later in various West Midlands restaurants as a cook.
Well, well! A butcher’s assistant! A cook!
Officers’ reports on his early performance in the army – excellent! Weapon training? A Captain Johnson had commented: ‘A first-class marksman.’ Lieutenant West: ‘As a parachutist, this NCO has a natural aptitude. Displays coolness under any conditions.’ But his company commander had noted: ‘Impressed as I am by his achievements, this soldier is nevertheless a troublemaker in 2 Company, making no effort to form friendships with the other men. He is uncommunicative and occasionally violent; I have had to discipline him more than once. Overall, I am dubious as to recommending him for promotion.’
And there was a psychiatrist’s report: ‘This man’s aggression is such as to render him unfit for promotion. I recommend further tests.’
But there was no time for that because the unit was posted to Oman, where there was some action. It was of course performance in action that impressed the army, and as a result of it my man soon made corporal. Always a loner, though. And look out you didn’t jostle him; he could go off like a bomb. The first really naughty entry in his records told how he had smashed a man in the face with the sharp edge of a mess-tin because he thought he had overheard a soldier passing a remark on his sexual prowess. Result: he was busted and drew nine months’ military prison at Shepton Mallet.
I knew Shepton. They were all staff-sergeants there, picked for brute force; they reckoned to break a man’s spirit down there in six months.
Not my man’s spirit, though. The army had decided to get rid of him when he came out with a dishonourable discharge, but it was in his records, how he had got them to take him back. He agreed to compensate the man he had injured (he had lost the sight of his left eye) out of his pay by royal warrant and then besides, there was his ser
vice record. McGruder? Christ, he had done some pretty amazing things. Just a corporal, but if he was sent out to do a job on the enemy with four or five men he’d leave them well back – just use them to cover him while he did everything that had to be done on his own.
Those had been his own words at his court-martial, where he conducted his own defence, telling his ‘friend’, a lieutenant, to fuck off.
I looked at the sheets in front of me, and thought long and hard about that: ‘I did what had to be done on my own.’
Yes. And there was always, of course, much later, the case of Wetherby, the supergrass, unsolved and still on file. The choice of weapon used to murder him – a sailmaker’s needle through the eye. Another hit job, another unusual weapon.
Next I turned up the transcript of his other trial, where he had been convicted of murdering a fellow corporal, a man called Brownlow. It made horrible reading. I turned back again to study the killer’s photograph. Looking at the date on the back, I saw that it had been taken for records on the day he was arrested. Looking at the face, it seemed incredible, what he had done. That often struck me with psychopaths, the difference between the look on the face and what they had done. Take McGruder, now. He looked so calm. Quiet, neat, peaceable, friendly: buy you a drink, mate!
Wrong. He was tried in a civilian court, since the crime had been committed while the unit was based in the UK at a camp outside Chester. The facts weren’t in question. Fifteen witnesses testified to his absence at the time the killing was done, at two in the morning; the special investigation branch of the army could take its pick. Well, it had done that, and then turned McGruder over to us. So he stood up in court and conducted his own defence yet again – there were notes in with the transcript as to how he was calm, uninvolved, you would almost say.
The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) Page 5