by Mike Hollow
“Morning, doctor,” said Jago. “What have we got?”
“Good morning, Detective Inspector. Young woman, mid to late twenties, I should say. Your constable seems to suspect foul play, but she could easily just have been caught by the blast of a bomb. No obvious signs of interference, but I expect you’ll want to get the pathologist to look at her. A proper examination in the mortuary will tell you more than I can from crawling round on my hands and knees in this mess, but I’ll leave that decision in your capable hands. In the meantime, I’ve certified her dead, and if you don’t mind I’d rather get back to my breakfast. I’m getting a bit too old and creaky for these early morning calls.”
With that he snapped his bag shut, dusted his trousers down with his hand, and made his way cautiously across the sloping debris towards a black Rover saloon parked on the other side of the road.
“Short and sweet,” said Cradock.
“Indeed,” said Jago. “A man with his mind on his pension, I suspect.”
He turned to the pair of police officers. Stannard’s expression was attentive, as if he were waiting for his next instruction, but Price looked uncomfortable.
“Are you all right, Constable?” said Jago.
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” said Price. “Just feeling a little queasy.”
“Not your first body, is it?”
“Well… It’s just… a young woman like that, sir, lying there dead. It was just a bit of a…” His voice trailed off, uncertainly.
“PC Stannard,” said Jago, “I suggest you take your colleague for a cup of tea. I expect you’ve both had a demanding night. But two things before you go.” He turned to Price. “First, you go and find a phone that’s working, call the station and tell them to get Dr Anderson the pathologist down here as quickly as he can manage – immediately, if possible.”
Price set off, scrambling back down the mound of wreckage towards the road.
“And second, sir?” said Stannard.
“Second, tell me: who are these men who found the body?”
“That lot over there, sir – or two of them, anyway, the ones on the right,” said Stannard, gesturing with his thumb in the direction of the group of men standing on the pavement. “They’re part of the heavy rescue party that’s been working here during the night. They told the ARP warden, and he found me and Price pretty sharpish and brought us down here. Shall I fetch them over?”
“No,” said Jago. “Just tell the two who found her to come up here, then go and get your cup of tea when Price comes back. We’ll manage.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Stannard, and headed off in the direction Price had taken. Jago saw him speak to two of the men. The constable pointed back up the heap, and they began to clamber up it.
Both of the rescue men were clad in blue dungarees and flat caps, so filthy as to make the departed police constables look relatively respectable. Jago scrutinized them as they approached. He estimated the taller of the two to be almost six feet in height and in his late forties. The second man was shorter and looked a little younger.
It was only when they drew close that the bigger man’s face became clearly visible. Jago stepped forward to stand squarely in the man’s path, his arms crossed.
“Well, well,” he said. “Now look who’s turned up like a bad penny. The Good Samaritan himself, eh? Fancy seeing you here.” He peered into the man’s face. “Just happened to find a body, did you? Simple as that. If anyone else had told me, I’d believe them. But nothing’s ever simple with you, is it? Can you think of one good reason why I should believe you?”
CHAPTER 3
Jago looked round to see where Cradock was and beckoned him to his side.
“Let me introduce you. Detective Constable Cradock, you may not have come across this gentleman before, but he and I have spent a considerable amount of time together over the years, one way or another. Mostly in the nick. Isn’t that right, Harry?”
The man’s only response was a look of what Cradock took to be pained incomprehension.
“Henry Parker, Esquire, of this parish,” said Jago. “Commonly known as Harry.”
He took a close look at Harry’s clothing, as if inspecting him on parade.
“Well, I never. I have to say, Harry, you’re the last person I’d expect to see out here rescuing people. I thought you had better things to do at night.”
“Oh, please, Mr Jago,” said Parker. “That was a long time ago. You must know I gave all that up years back. Straight as a die, I am, so help me.”
“I had heard rumours, Harry, but you’ll forgive me for being sceptical. Policeman’s habit, you know. So how do you make your living nowadays, if it’s not climbing in through the windows of the unsuspecting public and relieving them of their valuables?”
“I clean them, don’t I? The windows, I mean – I’m a window cleaner. Least I was, till old Adolf started going round smashing them all. Things’ve gone a bit slack in the window-cleaning business of late. I still do some, mind – proper regular work, but it’s mainly for businesses, the ones who have to keep looking smart. Anyway, I’ve got involved in this heavy rescue lark now. It pays a bit, and I’ll have you know, Detective Inspector, I’m saving people’s lives. Repaying my debt to society, you might say.”
“Very noble. You must be putting in some pretty long hours if you’re repaying your debt to society.” He looked Harry up and down. “Looks like you’ve put on a bit of weight since I last saw you, too.”
“Yes, it’s my wife’s cooking.”
“So you’re not the one who goes crawling through cellars and wreckage to rescue people, are you?”
“No, Mr Jago, I leave that to the skinny blokes. I may not be quite as fit as I used to be, but I’m still good with ladders and with lifting and shifting. I can drive too – got a lorry licence six years ago when they first came out, and I’m the only one in the squad who’s got one. So it’s my job to drive the truck.”
“Man of many talents. And where are you living now?”
“47 Hemsworth Street. And before you ask, the furniture’s all paid for, and I’m up to date with the rent too.”
“Very good. Now perhaps you could introduce me to your colleague.”
The shorter man standing a few feet behind Parker pinched the short remainder of his cigarette between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand and slowly took it from his mouth, blowing a lazy stream of smoke upwards into the air. Jago wondered whether this was something the man had picked up from a movie.
“No need, Harry,” said the man. “I can speak for myself.”
“By all means,” said Jago. “Could you give us your name, please?”
“Jenkins. Stanley Jenkins, but my friends call me Stan.”
“Thank you, Mr Jenkins. And you’re a member of this rescue party too?”
“Yes, I’m in the same boat as Harry, really. Before they decided to have this war I was a roofer, but the government’s pretty much stopped people building anything now, so it’s all gone a bit quiet in my line of work too.”
“You’ll be good with heights and ladders then, like Harry, if you’re a roofer. Am I right?”
“Oh yes, definitely. But I don’t drive. Never had enough money to run a car, and never had occasion to drive a truck.”
“Thank you, Mr Jenkins. Now perhaps one of you would be good enough to tell me what happened here. How did you find the body?”
The two men exchanged a quick glance. Harry Parker spoke first.
“We were called out at about eight o’clock last night, not long after the air raid started. These houses had been hit, so we were sent down here to dig out anyone who might be trapped and generally tidy the site up a bit, make it safe – prop up dangerous walls and such like.”
“And was anyone trapped?”
“Yes, we got a couple of old dears out from the first house that isn’t there any more, if you see what I mean. They were the only people the ARP warden knew were unaccounted for – until we found the
m, that is – but we had a good look round after that in case there were any passing strays that had got caught out in the raid. You can easily miss someone, you know. Sometimes these days all you find is a few bits.”
“Quite. So what happened next?”
“We got a message telling us to go and help at another site.”
“What time was that?”
“Just before ten, as I recall. Is that right, Stan?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Jenkins.
“And what did you do then?” said Jago.
“We went, of course,” said Harry. “It’s not up to us where we go and what we do. We just go where we’re told. And we have to be quick about it too. We don’t spend half our time standing about doing nothing, like your lot.”
“All right, Harry. But you haven’t told us about the body yet. What happened?”
“Well, that’s just it. That’s what I couldn’t understand. When we left, there was no sign of her. No sign at all. I call that fishy.”
“Fishy? If what I know of you’s anything to go by, things only start getting fishy when you turn up, Harry.”
“Oh, come on, Mr Jago, that’s a bit harsh.”
“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you. That was true twenty years ago, and nothing’s happened since to make me change my mind. In fact the only thing I can see that’s changed is your waist measurement, so I probably couldn’t even throw you that far now. Why should I take anything you say as gospel?”
“But I told you,” said Harry. “I’ve changed. Honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, that’s me.”
“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, then,” said Jago. “Now tell me what makes you think there was something fishy going on.”
Harry drew himself up straight, like a man vindicated in court.
“Well,” he said. “It was like this, you see.”
He turned to Cradock.
“You going to write all this down?”
“Yes,” said Cradock. “Don’t you worry about that. Look – pencil, notebook, all ready.”
“Good. I expect this is going to be crucial evidence.”
“Get on with it, Harry,” said Jago.
“All right, all right,” said Harry. “So anyway, we get the call and off we go to the other place – down Beckton Road it was, about half a mile away. Nasty business – there was this woman who’d decided to ignore the siren and stay in the house. She’d got a bed downstairs, thinking it’d be safer. As it was, of course, the house was hit and collapsed on top of her. We had a job clearing the stuff away so we could get to her – the whole upstairs and the roof had fallen in. But she was one of the lucky ones – the blast had blown a wardrobe across the bed, and that’d kept most of it off her, and she survived. Different story next door, though. The family who lived there had gone down into their Anderson shelter and copped it – the whole lot of them. Mum, Dad and three nippers, all dead. Very messy, it was. So that kept us there quite a while, you see.”
“And then what?”
“As soon as we’d finished there we shot back up here to finish off tidying things up, like I said. And before you ask, I know exactly what time we got here, because I was wondering how close we were to knocking-off time. It was ten past five this morning. We’d only been on the site a few minutes when we came across the body – it must’ve been twenty past five at the latest. That’s when we started thinking there’d been some funny business going on.”
“Funny business?”
“The thing is, I know for a fact that that woman wasn’t there when we left this site at ten o’clock last night. So how come she’s suddenly there dead at five o’clock the next morning?”
“Could she have been killed by a bomb that fell after you’d gone?”
“That’s what I thought at first, especially on account of there being that debris on her.”
“What debris was that?”
“There was a bit of wooden rafter lying across her legs and a couple of bricks on top of her arm –”
“There wasn’t when I saw her,” Jago interrupted.
Harry shrugged his shoulders.
“Probably that doctor feller moved it so he could get a better look. I don’t know. Looked to me like he was in a hurry.”
“Carry on,” said Jago.
“So anyway, I’m standing there looking at this corpse and thinking the same thing as what you said – there must’ve been another bomb. Only I’m thinking there couldn’t have been, because the site looks just the same as it did before. She was lying there, like she is now, with that bit of wall still standing behind her, and everything all around looked the same as it did when we left it. In other words, the place was all blown up, but no more blown up than it had been at ten o’clock last night.”
“So what did you do?”
“We went to find the warden, told him what we’d found. We checked with him about bombs too. He says the last bomb that fell here was at five-and-twenty past seven yesterday evening. Categorical, he was – he has to fill a form in, you know, and report the time.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So I’m thinking if the body wasn’t there when we left at ten o’clock last night, and there’d been no more bombs here since, but here she is dead at five in the morning, there’s definitely something fishy going on. I told Stan here to go and find a copper, pronto, which he did. Those two lads of yours turned up pretty quick, and I suppose they’re the ones who got you down here.”
Jago was about to conclude the conversation when he saw a familiar figure approaching from the direction of the road.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to Parker and Jenkins. “You’ve been most helpful. Detective Constable Cradock will make a note of your details. We’ll need a statement from you later.”
Jago left them with Cradock and began to walk back across the bomb-site to meet the new arrival.
“Good morning, Dr Anderson. Good of you to get here so quickly.”
“Morning, Inspector,” said the doctor. “I’m told you have a body for me.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Jago. “A young woman. Witnesses’ testimony suggests it wasn’t the air raid that killed her, so I’d like to know what did. She’s just up there.”
“Very well. I’ll take a little look at her and the surroundings, then I’ll have the body taken to the mortuary for examination.”
“Thank you. I’ll just check whether DC Cradock has finished with the witnesses and then we’ll join you.”
Jago turned back to see Cradock standing alone, writing in his notebook. The two rescue men had already left.
The heavy rescue unit’s Austin three-ton lorry was parked on Tinto Road. The other members of the squad had loaded their ladders, wheelbarrows, baulks of timber and tools onto the truck’s open back, coiled their ropes and hung them over the ladder rack behind the cab. Half a dozen of them were now sitting on the wooden benches that ran along both sides of the back, while two others stacked the baskets used for moving debris and loaded them into a corner of the truck.
One of the two turned round as he heard Harry Parker and Stan Jenkins approaching.
“You took your time gassing to those coppers,” he said. “Thought you were never coming back.”
“Sorry, lads,” said Harry. “Wasn’t much we could do about that. Still, all done and dusted now. Back to the depot?”
“I should think so.”
“Off we go, then. Should be there in two ticks.”
“About time too,” said the other man. He tossed the last basket onto the back of the lorry. “I want my breakfast.”
Harry walked round to the front of the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat, while Stan got in on the passenger side. Their two team-mates clambered over the tailgate into the back of the truck and found themselves room to sit amidst an assortment of shovels, picks, and crowbars.
Harry started the engine and prepared to move off. As the vehicle began to move he leane
d forward slightly and felt beneath his seat with his right hand. His fingers came into contact with a package wrapped in sacking. He smiled to himself. It was still there.
CHAPTER 4
“Here you are, dear,” said the woman in the familiar navy-blue serge uniform. Her face was tired, and she brushed away a wisp of greying hair that had escaped from under her bonnet. She looked down with a smile from inside the Salvation Army mobile canteen at the dishevelled pair of police constables standing on the pavement and placed a mug of hot tea on the fold-down counter that hung from the side of the vehicle. “Busy night tonight for you, eh?”
“Not so quiet for you either, I should think,” said Stannard. “And you’re not getting paid to be out here, are you?”
The woman laughed as she poured a second mug from the urn.
“I don’t think I could do your job, even if I was.”
“Not your cup of tea, then, as you might say?”
“Most definitely not, officer,” she said. “Now, would you like a couple of currant buns too?”
“Thanks, love,” said Stannard. He gave an appreciative nod and moved away, holding the two mugs with one hand and the buns with the other. It hadn’t taken long to find the mobile canteen. The Salvation Army volunteers tended to head for where the trouble was, and tonight they had parked just a few streets away, in a turning off Barking Road. He’d told Price to take the weight off his feet while he went to fetch them something to drink: the War Reserve constable looked as though the night’s work had taken it out of him.
He headed back to where he had left Price sitting on the kerb. A nice cuppa should put him right, he thought. And now that there was the prospect of getting a bit of rest, he began to notice how tired he was himself.