by Laura Wilson
‘So you don’t think he killed them?’ asked Stratton, rumpling his hair in frustration.
‘As I said, it’s hard to tell. The confession – if he makes one – may be entirely genuine.’
Stratton sighed. He knew it wasn’t worth asking for anything more definite, because he wasn’t going to get it. ‘Do you think he’s insane?’
‘No, I don’t. The psychologist appointed by the defence may, of course, have other ideas, but in my opinion he’s sane. Highly abnormal, certainly, but not suffering from mental disease.’
‘I suppose that’s something to be grateful for,’ Stratton told Ballard at the end of the day, when they were comparing notes.
‘Yes, sir …’ Glancing at his wristwatch, the sergeant added, ‘If you don’t mind my saying, you look as though you could do with a drink.’
‘I don’t mind at all,’ said Stratton, gratefully. ‘But I’m buying. Come on.’
By unspoken consent, they headed for the Three Crowns, known to be favoured by policemen and therefore not too popular with villains, and found a quiet corner.
‘We ought to get results with that lot,’ said Ballard, once they were settled with their pints. ‘All those samples …’
‘Ballard?’
‘Sir?’
‘Would you mind if we talked about something else?’
‘Of course, sir. Anything in particular?’
Stratton shook his head. ‘Just anything that isn’t this.’
‘There’s always football, sir. We,’ Ballard grinned, ‘are doing rather well at the moment.’
Stratton pulled a face. ‘Perhaps not such a good choice of subject.’ Ballard had a lot more reason to be cheerful than Stratton, whose team, Tottenham Hotspur, had not been enjoying nearly so much success. ‘Why do you support Arsenal, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You live in Putney.’
‘I grew up near there – the Holloway Road, up towards Archway. My dad used to take me to matches when I was a nipper. Haven’t been for a while, though,’ he said wistfully. ‘Being so far away doesn’t help.’
‘I had an idea you came from south of the river.’
‘Heavens, no. That’s the missus. I’d have preferred to stay north – doesn’t feel like proper London, somehow, being across the river – but Pauline likes it, being close to her family. My father-in-law’s a Chelsea supporter, always giving me stick … What about you, sir? You grew up in Devon.’
Stratton, detecting a faint undertone of accusation – the suspicion that he might have done the unthinkable and turned his back on a boyhood, and therefore formative, allegiance – said hastily, ‘I wasn’t really interested as a kid. The local team wasn’t up to much, and I didn’t play beyond the odd kick around. Other things to do in the country, I suppose, and my dad had us all helping on the farm as soon as we could walk. When I was courting Jenny her dad invited me along to White Hart Lane – I think it was his way of showing his approval – and I enjoyed it, so,’ he shrugged, ‘I carried on going.’
Going home afterwards on the bus, aware of the three pints he’d drunk but not unpleasantly so (he’d emptied his bladder before leaving the Three Crowns), Stratton thought what a relief it was to talk about something normal. Ordinarily, he avoided the hearty confidences of pub intimacy, but this was different. He’d never given any thought to Ballard’s domestic set-up – any more, he supposed, than Ballard thought about his. It was nice to have a small glimpse of the other side of the sergeant’s life, he thought. It made him think of when his own children were small, before the war. Kicking a ball in the garden with Pete, Monica proudly showing him her drawings and the doll’s clothes she’d made out of scraps, great big loopy stitches . . . Now that the sheer relief of knowing she was safe had worn off a bit, he wondered how they were going to manage when the baby came. She’d have to stop work, of course, as soon as the pregnancy started to show. What was she going to tell them at the studio? The truth was bound to cause all sorts of speculation, and he doubted if the girl Anne could be relied on to keep her mouth shut for long … He’d bet that in a place like Ashwood gossip about anyone, no matter how low down the pecking order, was valuable currency. And Raymond Benson, of course, was pretty high up the pecking order … What would he do if it came out? Deny it, probably, but whether he’d be believed or not was another matter.
He spent the rest of the journey with his mind tangled in pointless hypotheses and suppositions, so that by the time he stepped off the bus in Tottenham High Road, the gentle glow cast by the chat and the pints had worn off completely, and the suffocating feeling of worry combined with failure had returned in spades. At least Monica will be home now, he thought. She’d spent the last couple of nights at Doris’s, but she’d be back tonight and they could have a talk about the future.
Passing the hedge two doors down from his house, he was jerked out of his gloomy thoughts by a man’s voice bellowing in anger. He couldn’t make out the words, but somebody, somewhere, was having a hell of a row. He stopped and looked around but couldn’t, immediately, pinpoint the source of the noise. The only thing that looked in any way unusual was a strange car, a Jowett Jupiter sports model by the look of it, parked beneath a street lamp on the other side of the road. Only three families in the street possessed vehicles – there was a Morris Minor, a Wolseley four-door saloon, and an elderly Baby Austin, none of them nearly as new or as smart as this one. Someone’s wealthy relative, perhaps, come to visit? Stratton shrugged and carried on walking.
It was only when, seconds later, he got to his own front gate that a shrill scream, followed by a thud, removed in one horrible, visceral second any uncertainty about its origins.
Chapter Seventy-Four
‘Monica!’ Stratton jabbed the key into the lock and turned it, but the door would not open. He walloped it with the flat of his hand and it yielded, but only a small fraction, as though somebody, or bodies, were bracing themselves against the other side. ‘Monica!’
Stepping back, Stratton dropped his shoulder and charged. There was a moment’s resistance, and then the door flew open. Caught off balance, he toppled forward into the hall, catching himself painfully on the bottom of the banister.
‘Dad!’
Pushing himself upright, he saw Monica cowering in the doorway of the kitchen, a livid red mark on one side of her face. Turning round, he saw a man scramble up from the floor of the corridor and make for the back door. ‘Oh no you don’t!’ Stratton charged after him, grabbed him, and shoved him face-first against the wall.
Grunting in pain, the man made a single convulsive effort to break away from his grip and then stood, still and limp, where he was. Monica appeared at his side. ‘Let go of him, Dad. Please. Don’t hurt him.’
‘I should have guessed,’ spat Stratton, manhandling him round so that they were facing each other. ‘Raymond Benson.’ He’d be handsome, all right – a real Romeo, in fact – if he wasn’t about to shit himself. Grabbing him by the lapels and yanking him forwards, Stratton said, ‘Well? What have you got to say for yourself? You’ve obviously hit my daughter – don’t bother denying it. That mark didn’t get there by itself. What else have you done to her, you bastard?’
‘Dad.’ Stratton turned his head to see Monica by the stairs, pale with fright. ‘Please, you won’t—’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said grimly. ‘I won’t harm a hair on his pretty head, much as I’d like to. You go upstairs and bathe your face.’ Turning back to Benson, he said, ‘You and me are going to have a little chat.’
‘Dad …’
This time Stratton didn’t turn round. ‘Upstairs, Monica. Now!’
When she’d gone, Stratton let go of Benson. ‘Are you going to talk to me,’ he asked in a low voice, ‘or are you going to try and make a run for it again?’
‘Talk,’ spluttered Benson, looking as if his legs might give way at any minute.
‘I thought so.’ Stratton walked him into the sitting room and pointed to an armchair. ‘Sit.’
Bens
on sat down with a bump, his eyes round with fright.
‘Now,’ said Stratton, standing directly in front of him. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I wanted to see Monica. I was worried.’ The rounded, silky tones were gone now, replaced by a reedy tenor.
‘Like hell you were. You were shouting at her – I could hear you halfway up the street.’
‘I’m afraid I …’ Benson swallowed. ‘I might have lost my temper a bit.’
‘I see. You were worried about her and you lost your temper. And you hit her. What else did you do?’
‘Nothing. I swear … I didn’t touch her.’
‘But you came to see if she’d got rid of your baby, didn’t you?’
‘Well …’
‘Disappointed, were you? Tried to persuade her but she wouldn’t listen? That’s what the argument was about, wasn’t it?’
Benson didn’t answer, but his face said it all for him. Stratton could see the man’s mind racing, the speech being prepared. ‘I do appreciate your feelings,’ he said at last. ‘I also appreciate that I must take my share of the blame in this … this matter … I thought if I could speak to Monica, we might be able to work out a solution that—’
‘—that meant you could waltz off to your next conquest and forget all about it!’
Benson swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively. ‘I really don’t see what else I can do,’ he said, helplessly. ‘These things do happen—’
‘Not in this house they don’t.’
‘And I do have my reputation to think of.’
‘Shame you didn’t think of it before you took your trousers off,’ said Stratton, acidly. ‘My daughter’s reputation doesn’t matter, I suppose.’
‘I didn’t say that, Mr Stratton. All I meant was that, unlike myself, Monica is not the subject of public scrutiny.’
‘I should have thought that public scrutiny, as you call it, was a very good reason to face up to the consequences of—’
Stratton was cut off by a scream from above. Whirling round, he dashed out of the room and up the stairs. On the half-landing he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Monica standing at the top of the stairs outside the bathroom. In the weak light afforded by the bulb on the landing he saw that not only had she removed her stockings but that there was a thick, dark trickle of what could only be blood flowing down the inside of one leg towards her ankle. For a moment, he stared at her stupidly, not realising what it meant.
‘Daddy, the baby … it’s the baby. . .’
‘Baby, yes … yes …’ Mind racing, he looked wildly about him as if a solution might pop out of the walls.
‘Help me …’ Monica bent double, clutching her stomach.
‘Look,’ said Stratton, as calmly as he could. ‘Just … Here …’ He leapt up the last few stairs and put an arm round her, steering her into the bathroom and lowering her onto the toilet. ‘Keep as still as you can … Use this.’ Grabbing two towels from the rail, he pushed them into her lap.
‘Daddy …’ Monica stared at him, eyes wide and bewildered. ‘The baby,’ she repeated, as if he hadn’t understood.
‘I know. Just stay put. I’m going downstairs to telephone Aunt Doris – she’ll know what to do.’
He closed the door and charged back down the stairs. Benson was standing in the doorway of the sitting room. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Monica – she’s losing the baby.’
As he turned to pick up the telephone, Stratton caught, out of the corner of his eye, a flash of unmistakable relief cross Benson’s features. Without thinking or even really knowing what he was doing, he pivoted on the balls of his feet – a move learnt in his boxing days, now unconsciously and perfectly replicated – and punched him: a single knockout blow to the jaw.
Chapter Seventy-Five
‘No evidence of carbon monoxide,’ said McNally. ‘As I mentioned, I’m pretty sure I’d have picked it up the first time round if there had been.’ The calmly professional tone didn’t quite mask the pathologist’s relief. Not that Stratton blamed him – the tension between him and Tindall had been obvious during the post-mortem, and it would definitely have been one-up to Tindall if any traces had been found.
Tucking the telephone beneath his chin, Stratton scribbled a note. ‘Anything on the pubic hair?’
‘Well … it’s a bit complicated, this. One of the samples in the tin could have come from Mrs Davies, but not just prior to death.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The problem is the ends of the hairs. Without going into too much technical detail, if the hairs in the tin do come from Muriel Davies, then they must have been cut at least six months before she died, and I don’t suppose that the lady went around giving out samples of her pubic hair, so … I’m afraid it doesn’t help much.’
Stratton grimaced. ‘That would have gone a bloody long way to establishing that Backhouse killed her.’
‘It does mean that there’s at least one sample unaccounted for. I’m sorry it’s not better news, Inspector. But surely it doesn’t rule out Backhouse as Muriel Davies’s killer? There were four samples in the tin and – assuming that he’s responsible for everyone we found on the premises – he killed six, so that means he didn’t always take souvenirs or you’d have found the other two samples as well.’
That’s all I need, thought Stratton, replacing the receiver. For Christ’s sake … Why couldn’t anything – even pubic hair – be simple? His eyes felt prickly, as though they had sand in them, and he rubbed them with the heels of his hands, but it made no difference.
It had been a long night, made longer by the fact that, when it was over, he’d felt far too tense to sleep. Monica, now tucked up in bed after the ministrations of Doris and their doctor, had lost the baby. When questioned, she’d told them that, far from not touching her, Benson had slapped her so hard that she’d fallen across the back of a chair, and then he’d picked her up and punched her, this time in the stomach. The doctor, whose raised eyebrows had signalled disbelief at this story, changed his tune abruptly when, on examining Monica, he found the emerging bruises that confirmed it. Fortunately for Benson – and, probably, in retrospect, himself – the actor, who’d dropped like a sack of potatoes when Stratton punched him, had been brought round with a wet sponge and frogmarched, groggy and whimpering, out to his fancy car before the doctor arrived. Don, who had come round with Doris, had assisted in the process, and stood by while Stratton delivered his parting shot in a flat, menacing tone. ‘Don’t even think of making a complaint, chum. And if you ever come near my daughter again, I’ll kill you.’
They’d left him muttering to himself and inspecting his face in the rear-view mirror, and five minutes later, hearing a car start, they’d pulled back the sitting room curtains to see him driving slowly away.
‘Let’s hope you haven’t damaged him for life,’ said Don.
‘Don’t know how they’d tell,’ Stratton had replied. ‘Unless it was his face. Shame it won’t be his balls.’
Don had produced some Scotch, and they’d sat on either side of the fireplace, drinking it while the doctor and Doris were upstairs with Monica. His brother-in-law, as always, had been a godsend, but the fact that it reminded him of sitting helpless, in the same place, while Jenny had given birth to both children upstairs, didn’t help. At least, he thought, there were no yells of pain. About halfway through, Doris, emerging from the bedroom to boil water for some mysterious medical reason that neither man was inclined to question, had reported that although Monica had lost the baby the doctor thought there would be no lasting damage. When she’d gone, Stratton and Don had exchanged glances, and he’d known that his brother-in-law was thinking the same as he was; that, aside from the way it had come about, it was, in the long run – Monica’s future health being assured – for the best …
They hadn’t talked about it, just sat in silence for a while, and then Don had made a remark about something he’d seen in the newspaper to do with n
uclear artillery testing in Nevada. Both men had fallen on it with gratitude and a relish that Stratton knew neither of them felt, but at least the topic was far enough away from the immediate circumstances to render it a subject for emotionally neutral conversation.
The doctor had given Monica a sedative, and she’d been fast asleep when he’d looked in on her after everyone had gone. As he’d stood in the doorway, watching her soft face and swirl of dark hair on the pillow, he’d experienced an uprush of love and anxiety so great that it took his breath away and it was all he could do not to weep. Not daring to disturb her, he’d contented himself with blowing her a kiss, and murmuring, ‘Sleep tight,’ before retreating, in a torrent of confused and confusing feelings, to his own bedroom.
When he looked up again, Ballard was at his shoulder. ‘You all right, sir?’
‘Fine.’ Stratton didn’t think he could bring himself to mention the events of the previous evening without hitting something and besides, it was no part of the sergeant’s job to act as his nurse-maid – he’d done quite enough of that already. Briskly, he told Ballard about the pathologist’s findings, or lack of them, from Muriel Davies, and then the pair of them set off, in silence, for Pentonville.
Chapter Seventy-Six
‘I believe I wanted to help Mrs Davies,’ said Backhouse. Now washed, shaved and decked out in prison clothes, he looked a lot better than he had at the station, and – thank God – there was a lot less of the outraged-eye-and-indignant-nostril routine, too. Behind him, a warder stood impassively, like a statue, arms folded. ‘It was after the business when he went off with that friend of Muriel’s—’
‘Do you mean Shirley Morgan?’ asked Stratton.
‘I think that was the name, yes. After that, Muriel told my wife that she was going to leave her husband. We talked about it and agreed that if the Davieses did separate, we’d see if we could adopt little Judy. My wife mentioned this to Muriel, but she said that Davies’s mother would look after her, which we were quite sorry about, especially my wife, because she was very fond of the child, you see.’