Fifth Member

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Why not? He’s picking on the same sort of victims: all Members of Parliament. He uses the same method of killing and adds the same fancy touches – if you call posthumous castration a fancy touch – and to crown it all, puts himself to the trouble of aping Jack the Ripper. You see that as a taste for history, and a traditional frame of mind. I see it differently.’ He shook his head with a sudden violent movement. ‘That’s what really gets to me. The bastard signalled where he was going to commit his crimes, and we still couldn’t stop him. That gets up my nose more than anything else. Why, for God’s sake? I mean why tell us where he’d be? So that he could escape us and show us up for idiots, that he was spring-heeled Jack come again or something? That was what the original Ripper did, they say. Wrote a letter, showing off. We’ve had no letter from this one though.’ He sat and brooded for a moment and then sighed. ‘Oh, well. I suppose we’ll find out eventually, when we get him. And we bloody will!’

  She looked away, with an odd sense of embarrassment. ‘I wish I could be so sure.’

  He was genuinely surprised. ‘You’re not usually so pessimistic about a case.’

  ‘I know. But this one’s intelligent. I keep telling you, I think he’s killing for a reason.’

  ‘It’s true that you’ve been saying that all along, and I haven’t paid much attention. But you’re often right in these things, so I should. You still think it’s political?’

  ‘In a sort of a way it could be. I don’t think it’s party political. If you look at the MPs and lords who were killed it doesn’t make any sort of pattern that fits party alliances. We’ve got one Tory member, one Labour member, one hereditary lord, a Bishop and a TUC guy, a life peer. There’s a fair spread of attitudes, isn’t there? Though I suppose there’s a bit of a lean to the left with David CWG and Jack Scroop. I guess I could be wrong and it’s not political, yet I can’t get rid of the notion.’

  ‘Well, if it’s not a political motive, then what? A criminal conspiracy? I know we’ve uncovered one – or are in the process of doing so, to be accurate – but that only involves Diamond, and I suppose by association Lord Durleigh and David CWG. But it’s a tenuous link. The fact that a man was involved with a victim’s wife and is a friend of at least one of the other victims, and knows yet a third, is a link, but –’

  ‘But it doesn’t really make you jump up and down with excitement. Me neither.’ She looked up as their starters arrived. ‘I keep coming back to the politics of it – thanks, Kitty. That looks great. Oh, and you’ve got some Jalapeño sauce! Fabulous.’

  ‘Vinegar, ducks, vinegar’s all you need with jellied eels. Anything else is sacrilege.’

  ‘I like my pepper sauce. You back off, buster, and eat your own supper.’

  He did, and the next half-hour passed in agreeable and inconsequential chatter as they ate massive platefuls of fish and chips of the most delectable sort; as George told Kitty, yet again, she hadn’t lost her skill with a skillet. At which Kitty, looking over her shoulder at her vast range of big up-to-the-minute fish fryers and hotplates, was highly amused.

  Over their coffee, replete and relaxed, they returned to talking about the case. But somehow the edge had gone. That there was, somewhere tantalizingly out of sight, the clear link between all five of the victims, George was certain. That there would be found a solid and fully understandable motive for the deaths, she was equally sure. But what she couldn’t be sure about was why she was so convinced.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said to Gus a little sleepily as he drove them home, ‘someone said something to me that’s gone deep into my mind and won’t come out, but which I sort of know is the key. Could it be that?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Gus said as he steered the car into their driveway. ‘Just let me know when you’ve sorted it out. But do me a favour, sweetheart. Not till I’ve had a night’s sleep, which I will after that supper. I’ve at last got rid of the taste of the lousy food at that pub.’ He shuddered. ‘The Bald Monk! Starving Monk more like! Come on. Let’s get to bed.’

  That they had needed a good night’s peaceful rest was made very clear by the way they were next morning. They were up, showered, breakfasted and on the road for Spitalfields well before nine, and remarkably, for a pair who usually woke in a thoroughly curmudgeonly mood, without exchanging one snappy word. Gus was whistling contentedly through his teeth as he steered his old car through the early morning clots of traffic, cheerfully cutting up other drivers whenever he could. There was nothing he liked more than a journey punctuated by indignant squawks from other drivers’ hooters.

  The Market was bustling when they got there, having managed to find a parking meter not too far away, somewhat to Gus’s irritation. He much preferred using a single yellow line and then arguing the toss with the traffic warden who tried to ticket him; he reckoned that was a police privilege. But this morning he was in so sunny a mood he even put his coins in the parking meter without too much grumbling.

  ‘We’ll stay together, I think,’ he said. ‘If that wouldn’t make you feel hard done by? Because I’m the one who has to do all the questioning?’

  ‘That’s OK,’ she grinned. ‘I’ll do the thinking. Deal?’

  ‘I should be so lucky! Right, we’ll work as near to the storeroom as possible of course, to start with, not because I expect old Roop missed much but because now we know what we’re looking for. The sighting of a man in overalls –’

  ‘Stained, bunchy, and worn with a cap and galoshes,’ she said. ‘Then tally ho, old chap, and all that sort of thing, what?’

  He laughed and pushed his way through the busy people setting up for the day, and the early customers coming in on their way to their offices and workshops, with her close behind.

  The first hour went quickly and with it some of their good humour. All they found was that Rupert Dudley had indeed done a good job. There was no one among the established people at the Market, the shopkeepers and their regular customers, who had not been interviewed exhaustively, and no one had seen any more than they had already told Roop’s team.

  They used the second hour to widen the circle, talking to people who were not in direct lines of vision to the door behind which the body of Lord Durleigh had been found, which was, Gus had to admit, a pointless exercise really because unless someone was seen at the door, or near it, it wouldn’t constitute real evidence, even if he looked exactly the same as the man Maxwell had described as being at Creechurch Lane. ‘It’s the most flimsy of circumstantial evidence,’ he said gloomily. ‘But I suppose it’d be something. So let’s get on with it.’

  But they got nowhere, and at twelve-thirty, with their early happiness quite disappeared and both of them feeling not only bitterly disappointed but tired, grubby and very thirsty, they looked at each other and, without exchanging a word, knew the time had come to give up. No witnesses had seen any suspect activities here at the Market, whatever the Courier said.

  ‘Can’t you slap some sort of order on the Courier?’ George asked. ‘To make them divulge what they claim they’ve got?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Gus said savagely. ‘And make them crow at the tops of their voices about how the baffled police consulted them? It’s one thing to have proof – like the statements Maxwell made last night – but quite another when we haven’t a scintilla of evidence to back our demands. No, love, there’s no joy that way. Listen, I’m as parched as the Commissioner’s heart. I want coffee. Is there a place here we can get some?’

  She nodded. ‘I saw a sort of coffee shop back there – a canteen. I dare say I can find it again.’ And she plunged back into the Market, leading the way.

  The canteen was designed more for the stallholders themselves than for their customers, and many of them were sitting at small tables which were covered with slightly cracked oilcloth, eating lunch. There was a strong smell of toasted cheese and spiced bun beneath an overwhelming miasma of tea made in the really English style, thick and strong and very well laced with milk and sugar. George, who preferre
d her tea pale and milk free, sighed. It would have to be coffee, and everyone knew how dreadful English coffee could be.

  George was right to be gloomy. She contemplated the beaker of muddy instant coffee that the man behind the urns banged down in front of her, then followed Gus to a table right by the entrance to drink it.

  ‘This is gnat’s pee,’ he announced as he looked at the tobacco-brown mixture in his own beaker. ‘But I’m thirsty enough to drink anything.’ He began to gulp steadily.

  George, still feeling gloomy, looked around. Most of the people at the tables had their heads together, talking quietly, or were reading newspapers. A rather stooped figure, bulky yet somehow lacking any sense of being weighty, was moving between the tables, muttering. Most of the people the figure stopped beside either ignored it, or made a flapping gesture with one hand to try to send it away. One or two reached into pockets and handed over something. A beggar, George thought, another of London’s homeless, and felt the usual state of distress such sights gave her. Gus, catching the line of her gaze, shook his head.

  ‘Try not to hand over all you’ve got,’ he said. ‘A bob or two’ll be quite enough.’

  ‘I’ll spend what I like,’ she said, reaching into her pocket for her purse and pulling out a crumpled five-pound note. She had intended to give the beggar a pound when it reached her – and she had to think ‘it’ for at this point she couldn’t see what gender the bundle was – but Gus had tipped her over the edge into extra munificence. He laughed.

  ‘Oh, George,’ he said. ‘It’s so easy to push your buttons, sweetheart! No need for that, I’ll muck in,’ and he put his hand into his own pocket.

  The beggar had reached them by now, a fairly heavy effluvium of old tobacco, beer and some very basic body odours signalling her; for that is what she turned out to be. A woman in perhaps her late fifties – though George knew perfectly well that the lifestyle of these street alcoholics could put twenty years on their real age – she had a grimy face, a nose pitted with blackheads and eyes that were reddened and watery.

  ‘Got a few – Oh, ta!’ she said, startled, as at once both Gus and George held out their hands. Her face lit up as she saw the five-pound note in George’s hand and then, just as she reached out amazingly dirty fingers for it, she pulled back. ‘’Ere, what you want, then? I’m not doin’ anythin’ I shouldn’t. I got enough trouble on me plate, ta very much, without any more.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ George said as kindly as she could. ‘I’m not asking for anything. I just want you to have it.’

  The old woman quirked her head. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re a Yank,’ as though that explained everything, and took the note so fast that it was a blur. With amazing speed she hid it somewhere beneath the bundle of garments in which she was wrapped.

  She reached out again for the coins Gus was offering and he grinned at her, the wide white wolfish grin that he affected sometimes. ‘I’m not so soft,’ he said. ‘I ask questions, I do, for my cash. D’you come here often?’

  She cackled suddenly. ‘Yeah! I likes the dance floor.’ And did a sudden awkward pirouette, twirling round on lumpy booted feet. George and Gus laughed and the old woman did too, revealing surprisingly white teeth of her own.

  ‘So, you see a lot of what goes on here?’ Gus said invitingly.

  ‘I sees what I wants to see. And ignores the rest.’ She was holding out her hand again, looking at the coins in Gus’s palm. There was a glitter about her that made her seem rather alarming suddenly, George thought.

  ‘Heard about the murder here, did you, then?’ Gus managed still to keep his offering tantalizingly out of her reach.

  ‘Course I did! I’m not daft!’

  ‘Any idea how it was done?’

  ‘’Ow d’you mean?’

  ‘Locked door and all that. Didn’t you hear? He got in through the –’

  ‘Through the hinges. That’s right.’ She pushed her hand forwards more aggressively. ‘Listen, are you givin’ me that money or ain’t yer? ’Cause if you ain’t, I’m on my way. I got my own affairs to look after.’

  Gus was looking at her sharply and suddenly said, ‘How about some grub? It’s all right. You can have the cash as well. There you are. But how about a bowl of that soup?’ The man behind the counter had lifted the lid from a big pan at the back, and a waft of steam scented with onions and carrots and a hint of lamb and barley had drifted through the canteen. It was an agreeable smell to George who was not hungry, and the old woman, who almost certainly was, lifted her head and took it in, never taking her gaze from Gus.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘To give me a bit of info. Soup, and what’s more, another fiver,’ Gus said with a casual air, leaning back in his chair as if he couldn’t care less. ‘I reckon you see things around here and I’d like to hear just what. But it’s up to you.’

  There was a long silence, and then the old woman sighed, a bubbly sound. ‘Might as well,’ she muttered. ‘Got through the rest of it already, di’n’t I? Mean buggers, thinkin’ they can do that to me. ’Undreds they said and then it was just a pony. So I might as well. But I wants the soup an’ all, mind!’

  ‘You shall have it,’ Gus said gravely and moved along the bench on which he was sitting to make room for the malodorous old woman beside him.

  29

  George fetched the soup, together with a roll and butter and a slab of cheese, and together they watched the old woman hoover it up as though she had never eaten before. That she was half starved was obvious and George was worried for a moment or two when the woman stopped eating, and sat panting for a while. Had they overfed her, let her take too much, too fast? That could be almost as damaging to a starved person as going without food.

  But she recovered and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and again grinned, showing those white teeth. She had good dentistry once, George thought. How did this happen to her? But she had no time to pursue the thought because Gus was now leaning forwards to look into the dirty face and talk to her. ‘So, what’s your name, darlin’?’ he said easily.

  She looked down at his hand where a five-pound note had appeared between his fingers. ‘Sally, if you must know,’ she said, and snatched the note which also disappeared into the malodorous clothing. ‘Sally Whittaker, tha’s me. I was a dancer, you know. Yes, I was. A dancer. When I was a girl.’ There was a little silence and then she sniffed unpleasantly and looked at George. ‘What about a bit o’ pud then?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ George was startled.

  ‘She wants a dessert,’ Gus said. ‘I saw apple pie, I think. If that’ll do?’

  ‘If there ain’t nothin’ better, it’ll have to,’ Sally said. George went and fetched some together with a beaker of tea.

  Again they had to wait until she had demolished the food, and then she sat back, the cup of tea steaming in front of her and actually looked at them with an agreeable expression on her dirty face.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘That was a bit of all right, that was. My lucky day, ’n’t it? Had a few o’ them lately. Maybe me stars are in the ascendant. I’m a Pisces. What are you?’

  ‘I’m a nosy fella wants to know what happened with you and the Courier,’ Gus said. He was taking risks, George thought. They might be wasting their time with Sally Whittaker (though there was no way they were wasting their money, she told herself. The poor creature deserved every penny she could get) and the only way they would know was, she realized, to go right to the point as Gus had done. She held her breath for a moment, waiting for Sally’s response.

  It wasn’t only Sally who was having a lucky day, she decided. Because the old woman slid her gaze sideways to look consideringly at Gus and then she giggled. ‘You’re a smart bugger. ’Ow did you know I bin talkin’ to them?’

  ‘I didn’t till now,’ Gus said. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  ‘Just guessin’? Pull the other one. It’s got bloody tambourines on it, that one has. Someone tipped you off I bin seen talking to th
em.’

  ‘Swelp me bob, I guessed.’ Gus smiled at her. ‘Listen, ducks, you’re the first one I’d go for myself if I wanted to know what went on in the place. It’s obvious you’re a regular around here, the way you was goin’ round the tables. So, I took a guess.’

  ‘Oo are you?’

  He hesitated. ‘Detective,’ he said at length. ‘Been asked to work on this case.’

  She looked at him, her eyes glittering. ‘A private eye, like in the films? I was in one of them once. In 1967 it was. I was a woman in a crowd outside a courtroom. That Jason somethin’ was in it, you know the one? Got a lot o’ lines on his face, very fancy clo’s, you know the geezer I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ lied Gus. ‘Of course I do. Very famous.’

  ‘An’ you’re like him?’

  ‘Not so good lookin’,’ Gus said. ‘And no fancy clothes.’

  She laughed. ‘You can say that again. All right, I’ll tell you what I was telling the blokes from the Courier. Two of them there was, promised me ’undreds of pounds if I told ’em all I’d seen and then when I done it, said it was only worth twenty-five quid, take it or leave it. Buggers!’ She stared venomously at George as though she were one of the journalists who had cheated her, and George looked as sympathetic as she could.

  ‘Wicked,’ she said. ‘But you can’t trust some people, can you?’

  ‘You can’t trust them,’ Sally said. ‘What’ll you pay me then? Hundreds, like they promised?’

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ Gus said. ‘I only promise what I can deliver. I can give you another tenner on top of what you’ve got already. Can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘Now, there’s an honest man,’ Sally said admiringly and winked at Gus alarmingly. ‘So what d’you wanna know? Ask yer questions.’

  ‘What you told them, first,’ Gus said. ‘Then we can go on from there.’

  ‘Well.’ The bundle of clothes shifted in the seat as Sally settled herself more comfortably. She was smelling worse than ever now, but it didn’t matter. George felt a little wave of excitement lift in her. Perhaps they hadn’t wasted their morning after all.