A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  McNally looked thoughtfully at the boxes. ‘I should think with all the other stuff in the garden, there was plenty to keep it occupied without digging them up … And perhaps Backhouse didn’t let it out there for long enough to have a really good crack at them.’

  ‘I suppose so. Can you tell me anything else about them?’

  ‘Well,’ said McNally, ‘this one here was on the tall side for a woman – five feet eight or nine inches, and we think she was about twenty years old. The other was five feet two. She was older – twenty-eight or -nine. We do have her skull, but there’s been some attempt to burn it. There was part of a dustbin recovered, with evidence of burning, so that might have been used for the purpose. We’ve sent it to the police lab. We have this’ – McNally gestured towards a makeshift table on which lay a mass of brittle-looking dull brown hair, one side of it held with a rusting metal kirby-grip – ‘and these,’ he pointed at some fragments of rotted cloth which lay beside the hair, ‘which appear to be portions of clothing. We’ll be sending them along for analysis as well. There were a number of small bones – fingers – mixed up in it.’

  Stratton applied himself to the diagrams, rubbing his eyes. Hot with tiredness, they felt as if they were cooking in their sockets. ‘Just a moment,’ he said, looking at his notebook. ‘I’d like to make sure I’ve got it all clear … The first body from the alcove – we’ll call her Body One. She …’ he glanced at the page, ‘has been identified as Mary Dwyer. She’s twenty years old, never been pregnant, she’d been dead around forty-eight hours when she was found and there were traces of spermatozoa inside her.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said McNally.

  ‘Body Two,’ Stratton continued, ‘who may or may not be Kathleen McKinnon, has been dead for between seven and eight days. She was between twenty-five and twenty-seven years old, and has been pregnant, but not when she was killed. You found spermatozoa there, too.’ McNally nodding in confirmation, Stratton moved on. ‘Body Three, identified as Iris Manning. Dead for around three weeks, six months pregnant, thirty-two years old, body contained traces of spermatozoa … fine so far?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Body Four, found under the floorboards, a woman between fifty and sixty years old, who might be Edna Backhouse. No pregnancies, no spermatozoa … And all of the deaths were caused by asphyxia. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Good. Now, the two from the garden … have you any idea of how long they’ve been dead?’

  ‘Impossible to say. We don’t know how the soft tissues were lost – the mechanism, if you see what I mean. Unless, of course, you can establish who they are and when they went missing and there’s collateral evidence and so on. The lab might be able to help with that, because there were some pieces of newspaper in amongst the debris. Quite a lot from Area Three, where the skull was found.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any idea of the cause of death, have you?’ asked Stratton.

  McNally shook his head. ‘As I said, you’d need collateral evidence for that. Speaking of which, there’s the matter of the four pubic hair samples in the tobacco tin. I imagine,’ he said, carefully, ‘that it’s already occurred to you that one of them might have been taken from Mrs Davies.’

  Stratton nodded. ‘What about spermatozoa? In Mrs Davies’s case, I mean?’

  McNally shook his head regretfully. ‘I’ve been reading through the notes. We – I – didn’t check for that. I realise now that it was an oversight, but the … complexion, shall we say, of that case, at the time …’

  ‘I understand,’ said Stratton. ‘We weren’t looking for anything like that either.’

  McNally nodded. ‘When I received the telephone call, I …’

  He tailed off, shaking his head, and they stared wide-eyed at each other, united in recognition of the catastrophic extent of the whole business, bound together by an invisible and inescapable cat’s cradle of assumptions made and things left undone. Keep a lid on it, thought Stratton. He could just imagine what Lamb would say if he started talking about exhumation orders on Muriel Davies, who, together with her child, was buried in Kensal Rise Cemetery.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘The facts at the time …’

  ‘Yes,’ said McNally. Perhaps it was just because he was tired, emotional and susceptible, but the word seemed to Stratton to echo around the tiled room, bouncing off the harsh, tiled surfaces, and for a second, the pathologist’s spare, ascetic features transmogrified into the docile, bewildered ones of Davies. ‘Yes,’ McNally repeated. ‘Yes.’ A single word, that could mean both everything, and nothing at all.

  Chapter Fifty

  Diana woke at eight. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where she was. Cautiously, she levered herself into a sitting position, resting against the headboard. Her brain seemed to arrive in this upright position some seconds later than her body, and when it did, a large lump of dry, hard pain in the core of her head made her wince. God, how much had she had to drink? It was an effort even to blink. Mercifully, the curtains were pulled shut, but she could see, in the half-light, that she was in the bedroom at her flat, and that there was an evening dress – not her own – draped across the stool in front of the dressing table, and that her fur coat lay curled on the floor in the corner like a sleeping animal. Thirsty and confused, she wondered where James had got to, and then her warm, vague impression of whispers and fumbles and giggles resolved itself into an actual, cold memory – it had not been James at all, but Claude. He’d been here … But, judging from the dent in the pillow beside her, and – but for the distant roar of buses passing the end of the street – the silence, he was gone.

  What had she done? Looking down at herself, she realised that she was naked. Where were the rest of her clothes? Dragging her body across the bed, she peered down and saw that her stockings and underclothes were lying in forlorn heaps on the rug, discarded in the progress towards the bed. Disorientated and nauseous, she dimly remembered Claude peeling them off her, his gloating face – an excited boy unwrapping a longed-for birthday present – next to hers, his hot breath on her face … Dredging her memory, she came up with fragments: dancing with Claude at Ciro’s; him sitting down with them and ordering champagne, and then more champagne; Claude talking about the Mau Mau Uprising and Jock barely civil; feeling tipsy and reckless, not really listening to them, tapping her feet in time to the music; seeing, as though through a veil, disappointment on Lally’s face, and the cold disapproval on Jock’s … She wasn’t sure how it had been decided that Claude should accompany her home. Lally and Jock had left before they had, and Diana remembered protesting against their offer of a lift on the grounds that it would take them right out of their way. The recollection of Jock’s curt ‘Good night’ made her face burn with shame. How he must despise her.

  It’s all right for him, Diana thought angrily. He’s a man. She’d known that Claude was manipulating her, and hated herself for being manipulated, but she’d let it happen because she couldn’t bear the thought of going home alone to the dreary flat. After Lally and Jock had left they’d danced some more, drunk some more, and Claude had hailed a taxi and asked Diana for the address. She’d talked about F-J, then. He already knew, of course, but he hadn’t seemed to care. When she said, ‘He cared about you,’ Claude had said, ‘Yes, and a bloody nuisance it was, too – surely you weren’t jealous, darling?’ and laughed it off. She’d tried to impress on him how awful it was, but he’d dismissed it – ‘Life goes on’ – and kissed her. She should have pushed him away then, got out of the taxi, but she hadn’t.

  Where was he staying, she wondered. He hadn’t said, only that he was going back to Kenya. He’d fit in beautifully with all those bored, promiscuous expatriates, she thought sourly. If the Mau Mau didn’t get him, an irate husband almost certainly would. She remembered sitting on the sofa with him, and him producing a bottle of champagne like a conjuror – they’d drunk it out of tea cups because she hadn’t been able to find any glas
ses – and then banging her leg on the door frame as he’d carried her across the threshold of the bedroom … and then, once undressed, only numbness as he’d entered her.

  Had it been like that with James? She tried to remember the last time they’d been intimate, but couldn’t. She supposed she ought to feel guilty, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything except sick. Gingerly, she got up, dragging the counterpane off the bed and wrapping it around herself. As she crossed to the window, her bare foot struck something hard and she looked down to see an empty champagne bottle rolling across the floor. Pulling aside the curtain, she peered out of the window, but a blast of morning sunlight hit her, making her draw back. It didn’t matter – who, or what, was she looking for? Claude would have left hours ago.

  Turning, she saw on the small table beside the bed a piece of paper with a short message. Didn’t want to wake you, darling. Until next time x, she read.

  As if I was just there for the taking, she thought, as angry with herself for being so as she was with him for assuming it. She screwed the note into a ball and was about to go and drop it into the wastepaper basket beside the dressing table when she caught sight of another piece of paper, folded into four – Claude must have left that, as well.

  It was a five pound note.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Having returned to the station and sifted through what seemed to be a small avalanche of statements taken by Canning and Arliss from the Paradise Street neighbours, Stratton was desperate for a few minutes on his own. DI Grove had telephoned to confirm that the other victims were Kathleen McKinnon and Edna Backhouse, the winnowing of the garden was now, by late afternoon, completed, and there was a large pile of reports about sightings of Backhouse on his desk – Colwyn Bay, Kettering, Berwick-on-Tweed and God Only Knew Where Else. Stratton shovelled up handfuls of them and put them aside. He needed to clear his head. With all that was in there jostling for space, he felt as if he might simply explode into pieces if he had to deal with any more people. Staying in the office meant constant interruption and the lavatory was out of the question – Arliss, who was having one of his periodic bouts of flatulence, was bound to come in and poison the air. The answer, he thought, was a walk round the block. Nothing too peculiar about that, and he’d look in at the tobacconist’s while he was at it.

  He set off at a brisk pace and, striding past the end of Cork Street, suddenly thought of what Higgs had said about learning anatomy from doing human jigsaws. This, in turn, made him think of a conversation he’d had with the man sometime towards the end of the war, when he’d asked him whether a former mortuary assistant might have been a bit too keen on corpses … Anyone who’d been in civil defence or the police in London at that time would have seen, and handled, their fair share, and that included Backhouse. Had he learned to like it then? Stratton thought of the bodies he’d seen: tattered, shattered and crushed, caked with plaster dust and grime. How anyone could have found them in any way sexually arousing – unless they were stark raving mad – was completely beyond him. Perhaps Backhouse was mad. In any case, thought Stratton grimly, he did seem – quite literally – to be at home with the dead. Dead women, anyway.

  There’d been no spermatozoa inside Edna Backhouse, though. Stratton wondered about Muriel Davies. Presumably, nothing would be detectable after such a long time, or McNally would have mentioned the possibility.

  It seemed pretty stupid to foul your own doorstep in that way, but then Backhouse had killed in his own home, and one of his victims had been his own wife. And Davies was the ideal scapegoat – like so many of the liars Stratton had encountered, he was no good at recognising when he was being lied to, and being a dullard made him all the more vulnerable.

  If you were attracted to dead women, perhaps you couldn’t get it up for living ones? That would explain the lack of children – except that McNally had said there was something wrong with Edna Backhouse’s ovaries, hadn’t he? Perhaps he’d killed her because she knew – or had discovered – something about Muriel and Judy. Or perhaps just to get her out of the way so he could have his murderous way with a few tarts in the comfort of his own home …

  He passed a newspaper seller, whose board read: MURDER HOUSE GIRL NAMED. Presumably the rest would make the late edition, or tomorrow morning’s. Nothing like a good murder, Stratton thought bitterly, and this one had it all: sex, a rising body count, a national alert for the missing killer, and all topped off with a massive police cock-up – his cock-up. He watched as a few discarded sheets, clawed from the pavement by a sudden gust of wind, fluttered away down the street.

  As for where Backhouse actually was … The description had been in the newspapers twenty-four hours now, but not one of the dozens of reports that had come in so far was any use at all.

  ‘I thought I might find you out here, sir.’ Ballard, having apparently materialised out of thin air, was standing beside him.

  ‘Just needed a breath of air.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I thought you might like to see this.’ He gave Stratton a copy of the Daily Mail, folded to show a photograph of Muriel Davies, captioned Found Strangled With Her Baby. ‘Have a look at the fourth paragraph.’

  ‘“It has been established that the tragedy has no link with the murder of 19-year-old Muriel Davies and her 14-month-old daughter Judy, who were found strangled at the same address in 1950.” No, it bloody hasn’t been established. Where did that come from?’

  ‘DCI Lamb, sir. Trying to discourage speculation.’

  Stratton sighed. ‘Closing the stable door after the horse has gone, more like it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, sir, although it might keep them off our backs – for the moment, at least. I’ve just had a word with DS Porter. He’s been talking to the British Road Services.’ Noting Stratton’s blank look, he added, ‘Backhouse’s former employers, sir. Apparently, he gave his notice a month ago, and they’ve not seen him since. His records show that he was working as a clerk at the Ultra Radio Works before that, during the war – after he’d resigned as a special. I did a spot of checking, and it appears that one of the employees there, May Drinkwater – 29-year-old spinster – was reported missing in nineteen forty-four. Of course,’ Ballard ducked his head as if ashamed at his efficiency, ‘it’s possible that it had nothing to do with Backhouse – might have been a flying bomb or something – but she’s described as being the same height as the shorter skeleton, and she had brown hair, so …’

  ‘So we ought to look into it,’ finished Stratton. ‘Well done, Ballard. At least one of us is on the ball.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And we’ve got this photograph …’ he palmed it from his pocket and handed it to Stratton, ‘from Mrs Backhouse’s brother, to send to the papers. Obviously, it’ll have to be doctored to show the overcoat.’

  Stratton stared at the domed, bald head, the glasses, the prissy mouth and the weak, sloping shoulders. ‘Doesn’t look like a monster, does he?’

  Ballard shook his head. ‘No, sir. But they never do.’

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  When Stratton eventually arrived home and opened the front door, he caught a glimpse of Monica in the sitting room, reading – or anyway looking at – a magazine. She called out a greeting but as she made no move to get up he went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. He couldn’t face her just yet – his mouth was dry and foul, and the way he was feeling, having brooded on the matter all the way home in the bus, he feared he would start bellowing accusations at her and not be able to stop. Pete was gone, back to his unit, and except for the rustle of pages the house was silent, but the very air seemed to be poised and ominous, waiting for something to erupt. It must not be him, thought Stratton. He must remain calm.

  He stared down at the plate of food that had been left out for him – ham and lettuce, with two slices of beetroot bleeding over the leaves. Eating was out of the question; his stomach had contracted into a tight ball of anger. Hands trembling, he picked up the kettle and then, almost immediately,
set it back down on the gas ring with a clatter. At this rate, he’d end up breaking something. He went down the passage into the scullery and cupped his hands beneath the tap, gulping some water and splashing his face.

  Slowly and carefully, he retraced his steps and went into the sitting room. Monica – who, thought Stratton, certainly didn’t look pregnant, although she seemed tired and very pale – put her magazine down and, for a long, dangling moment, during which time seemed to hover rather than pass, they stared at each other. Then she said quietly, ‘Pete’s told you, hasn’t he?’

  The feeble hope that Stratton had been nursing at the back of his mind that Pete was, for some reason of his own, lying to make trouble, crumbled. His last illusions about having control over his daughter fell sharply away, leaving him with the vertiginous sensation of standing on the very edge of a precipice. He sat down on the sofa. Swallowing, he said, ‘It’s true, is it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s true.’

  The air seemed to tighten around him and, for a moment, he felt as though he were suffocating. ‘You’re certain about it, are you?’

  Monica nodded miserably.

  ‘How far …?’

  ‘Two months. Well, two and a bit.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ God, what a stupid thing to say. ‘I mean …’

  ‘It’s all right, Dad. I know what you mean.’

  ‘It isn’t bloody all right!’ Stratton checked himself with an effort, biting back a torrent of stuff about you’re my daughter and how dare you and I should never have let you go to work at that studio. He knew that, however much he felt all this, it was both pompous and pointless to come out with any of it. Closing his eyes for a brief moment in order to try and contain his feelings, he opened them again to find that Monica, her face set and white, was gazing at him with something a lot like fear in her eyes.