The Distant Dead

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘I’ll throw in my hat.’ The elderly man cleared his throat loudly. ‘Clive’s me name, footloose and fancy free is me nature.’ He snatched off his wire-framed glasses and puffing on the lenses buffed them vigorously with his stained tie. ‘Joy, if by feminist you mean one who loves women, c’est moi.’

  ‘That’s not being a feminist, that’s a lesbian, which I doubt you are, Clive. Some women are frightened they’ll be mistaken for gay if they admit to preferring women-only spaces.’ Joy spoke to the fob-watch man as if he were a child. ‘I, for example, am not a lesbian, however I won’t hide bitter disappointment that my expectation that this discussion would exclude men has proved to be false.’

  ‘I’ll be whatever you like, Joyous.’ Clive waggled his glasses like Eric Morecambe.

  ‘Is that about death?’ Andrea glared at Joy and Clive. ‘Men die as much as women, why wouldn’t they be here?’

  Paying attention to the group’s dynamics – Jack would if he was there – Stella decided Andrea’s animosity was indiscriminate and not aimed at her. But how odd to come since she clearly didn’t want to be there.

  So, I’m an—’ Clive was drowned out by Rod Stewart. Stella recognized ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’.

  ‘That’s mine. I have to go.’ Felicity was frowning at her phone.

  ‘Ooh, hoisted by your own – mobile phones off – petard, my dear.’ Clive’s glasses were steamed up, Stella couldn’t see his eyes.

  ‘We’ll tell you what we all took away with us.’ Joy appeared marginally more cheerful.

  ‘…sorry, but it means you all have to leave too. I’m responsible for locking up the tearoom. We shall continue tomorrow night.’

  ‘What if we’re busy tomorrow?’ Andrea ran the zip up and down her parka, reminding Stella of Jack’s four-year-old daughter Milly when she was cross.

  Heading across the tearoom with the remains of the cake, Felicity flung up the counter flap and shouldered the door to the servery.

  Stella and Gladys were gathering up mugs when they heard her call, ‘Don’t help, I’m far better on my own.’

  No one noticed Stanley hoovering up crumbs under the table.

  Chapter Five

  Thursday, 12 December 1940

  ‘Good to see you, doc. ’Struth, you got here quick.’ George Cotton strode into a room crammed with several dark-wood cabinets, a high-backed sofa, armchairs and plant stands. A technician was arranging arc lamps delivered by one of the police vans.

  ‘I was close by.’ Dr Northcote smiled.

  The two men shook hands. One, a divisional detective, pulled away from retirement on his allotment to replace conscripted police officers, the other, at thirty-nine already a celebrated Home Office pathologist, were divided by class and did not meet socially, but mutual regard ensured each was relieved to find the other at the scene of a murder.

  ‘Not quick enough to save French Annie.’ Northcote indicated the body of a young woman lying twisted at the foot of the sofa. ‘Killer can’t be far, she’s still warm.’

  ‘Chrissakes.’ Cotton spun on his heel and rushed out of the house. His voice rang in the street as he bellowed at the three constables clustered by the gate.

  ‘Check every house, alleyway, the dustbins, shelters in gardens, there’s a public one near the Black Lion. Boats, skiffs. If he’s on the eyot, he’ll be stranded, comb every ruddy inch. And,’ Cotton waved a hand at a houseboat moored nearby, ‘take that apart.’ He heaved a breath. ‘There’s a monster out there. Find him.’

  Cotton was still panting when he returned to the murder room. He noted the upturned chair and rucked Turkey carpet. ‘She must have struggled. Surprising not more neighbours didn’t hear.’

  ‘There was a raid on, don’t forget.’ Dr Northcote was crouched, the skirts of his coat between his haunches. ‘Anyway, people keep themselves to themselves these days, you know that.’

  ‘Unless they’re nicking stuff from dead people’s destroyed homes. I could swing for the schoolteacher we nabbed last night; he’d stolen a wireless set off a woman killed by a strike, because his own had stopped working. How such minds work, beats me.’ Cotton raked through dark hair, which took years off his actual age of forty-six.

  ‘No morals,’ Dr Northcote agreed.

  Standing next to the pathologist, George Cotton considered the corpse. He didn’t need Northcote to put her at between nineteen and twenty-five, and she’d been pretty, with looks that needed no make-up. Her fake blonde hair was washed and curled. If she’d been anything like June, that would have kept her busy – she’d probably worn curlers to bed last night. This picture pierced his heart. Thinking of June, Cotton said, ‘I’m thinking that black velvet dress and her silk stockings cost a bob or two.’

  ‘The coat and this mink must have been given by a satisfied customer.’ Northcote was reading his thermometer.

  One stocking was torn at the calf. The tear too slight, Cotton reckoned, to have occurred in her attempt to escape. One shoe was half off, the leg twisted beneath her at a dreadful angle.

  ‘Definitely murder?’ Not a question.

  ‘Strangulation, George.’ The doctor pointed with a six-inch rule. ‘See those abrasions? My guess is a ligature. A length of material, a tie most probably. Wound on the back of her head is with a blunt instrument of some kind.’

  ‘The poker, perhaps?’ Cotton went to the large marble fireplace and examined a silver companion set beside the grate. ‘It’s here, at the back. I doubt he had the presence of mind to return it.’

  ‘I think an ashtray. The wound is less specific than the head of a poker. There isn’t an ashtray here, bet he pocketed it.’ Northcote got to his feet.

  ‘Spur of the moment thing,’ Cotton mused. ‘Still warm, you said?’

  ‘I hate to give you a time, but on this occasion, I can safely state French Annie here’s only been dead about half an hour.’

  Cotton didn’t like Northcote’s habit of referring to all dead women as Annie, whether French or Old.

  ‘No sign of anyone in the vicinity, sir.’ A young man with acne-scarred cheeks in a suit of what Cotton fretted was black-market tweed – crime was no longer the proclivity of seasoned criminals – hovered by the door.

  ‘Check if this address is where this lady lived, Shepherd.’ Cotton fiddled with the rim of his hat.

  ‘There, I can help you, George.’ Northcote picked up his bag. ‘The house owner is one Oliver Hurrell, aged fifty-three—’

  ‘You know him?’ Cotton dreaded being called to the fatality of a friend.

  ‘Only by death. Hurrell, solicitor of this parish, was killed by shrapnel fire-watching at the Commodore yesterday. Germans got there first, but the chap would have dropped dead of apoplexy soon enough – arteries furred like London Underground cables and riddled with disease.’ He gave a tight smile. ‘No relations. I’ll show you the file on him.’

  ‘In that case what was this woman doing here?’ Cotton rubbed his chin. ‘All dressed for a night out.’

  ‘Not my job, but I’d say this lady was one of the blooms of the night.’ Northcote clipped shut his bag.

  ‘She doesn’t have the look of a prostitute. Her skin is too good, she looks well.’ Cotton wasn’t arguing, this was how they worked. One posing a theory, the other expanding on it or countering with another. ‘If she is, that outfit is too dear for picking up customers from the street – her clients would be too high a class to meet her in deserted premises. Any evidence of sexual activity?’

  ‘More than once, I’m afraid.’ Northcote leaned down and, almost tenderly Cotton noticed, took up one of the dead woman’s hands. ‘Like you say this girl fought like a cat, look at her nails. I did find skin underneath them so somewhere on his person, our man has scratches.’

  ‘Any hair?’

  ‘Not one strand, so either he was as bald as a coot or, more likely given the wound at the back of her head, she was caught by surprise.’

  ‘Some men see women’s lives as cheap.
’ At times like this, Cotton hated his job. Only an hour ago, this woman had her life before her.

  ‘Another case of girl lures gentleman into vacant house for sex then expects to fleece him.’ Northcote sighed.

  Cotton knew he and Northcote differed on this subject because, in his experience, men did the luring.

  ‘How did she know it was empty? Hurrell was living here only days ago.’ Cotton thought aloud.

  ‘I’m always saying, George, we should recruit tarts to spy for Britain – they know exactly what’s going on. They’d take on those German kids we hanged today.’ Northcote adjusted his scarf against the chill in the unheated house and added, laughing, ‘Perhaps we do employ them, what?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Cotton knew Northcote meant the two spies who, stumbling ashore at Dungeness last month, had got themselves caught immediately and hanged at Pentonville on the morning of the 10th. One, at twenty-four, was Shepherd’s age. Cotton was alone amongst his colleagues in thinking capital punishment brutal. It never put felons off from killing people or surely, in a war, committing treason.

  ‘That was a decent score.’ Northcote’s satisfaction reminded Cotton the pathologist had performed the post-execution autopsies. While Cotton could sometimes tire of policing, he never envied Northcote his job.

  While Northcote was packing up, Cotton did his own check of the house and ascertained it unlikely the woman and her killer strayed beyond the living room. When he returned, he said, ‘If her killer knew this place was empty, maybe he planned to kill her here.’

  ‘How would he know?’ Northcote said.

  ‘There’s a danger sign outside, for a start.’

  ‘It rather suggests our man has killed other girls. Were that so, I might have expected to have them come through to me,’ Northcote said.

  ‘One thing: no handbag. Women always carry one. Mark you, he’s deposited it in a nearby bin.’

  ‘Spot on, George, our killer won’t want to be seen prancing along with some fancy handbag on his arm.’ Northcote was as much a detective as Cotton.

  Cotton was gazing at the twisted corpse. The set of her features, the determined chin, suggested Maple Greenhill had known her own mind. How had she ended up dead in an empty house?

  ‘Sir.’ Shepherd was back. ‘Fingerprint man from the Yard’s here.’

  ‘Get him in toot sweet.’ Unlike some officers, Cotton welcomed anyone from the Yard. You couldn’t have too many cooks in the kitchen and these days fingerprinting was more often than not a clincher.

  ‘I’ll start on her first thing, George.’ Pausing, Northcote bowed his head to the dead woman and, donning his trilby, went out into the night.

  *

  Two hours later PC Shepherd was driving George Cotton past the brewery on their way to Corney Road, the address on the young lady’s ID card. As Northcote had predicted, police found her handbag in a bin near Eyot Gardens.

  Maple’s purse contained no cash, but along with the ID was a wage slip for the Express Dairies. On her modest weekly income, it would have taken Maple months to pay off her Jaeger coat. Otherwise, one lipstick, a powder puff in a squashed cardboard box and, somewhat of a surprise, a copy of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins which Maple had borrowed from Boots. Her bookmark, an oblong of felt embroidered with the letters MVG, was tucked near the end. That Maple liked reading didn’t fit Cotton’s – and surely not Northcote’s – portrait of a prostitute.

  ‘Two sets of prints in the house. Not much to go on, sir.’ Shepherd crawled the Wolseley past Chiswick House on their right. ‘Inspector Cherrill said one set will be Hurrell, the man who lived there. He reckoned the other is a right thumbprint which he said was Dr Northcote. Fancy him just knowing that and why would Scotland Yard have the doc’s fingerprints?’

  ‘Cherrill’s got the dabs of all manner of distinguished personages. I, too, am honoured to be filed in his system. Come on, chin up, lad. In the past, I’ll have you know, we’ve got a result with less than that. In the end it’s about wearing out shoe leather, and nous.’ Cotton discouraged pessimism in his reluctant recruit. The lad had been in the police only two years when war was declared; Cotton himself stopped him joining up because he needed him in CID. He’d told Shepherd: ‘There’s a job to be done here on the home front. If we all go off to fight, we’re leaving London to the criminal fraternity.’

  ‘One stroke of luck is they’ve still got Mr Hurrell at the Co-op undertakers.’ Untypically, Shepherd was quick to rally. ‘What with his funeral being tomorrow. The inspector is sure he’s not on file, otherwise we’d have been faced with exhumation.’

  ‘I’m sure he could have obtained plenty from all over the house. Just convenient having the original to hand, so to speak. One thing we know is Hurrell’s not a suspect.’ The brightest of CID having been called up, Cotton had to exercise patience.

  He’d explained the ID card wasn’t sufficient evidence to name their dead woman. You could get yourself in hot water relying on paperwork. Rifling through her bag and along the lining, tucked in a secret compartment with a folded ten-shilling note, Cotton had discovered a photograph. Edges crinkle-cut, it showed a boy aged about two perched on the lap of a young woman against a painted backdrop draped in velvet.

  It was Shepherd who confidently pronounced, ‘That’s her, sir.’

  It should be good news that the woman in the photo matched the body currently being transported to the Hammersmith morgue, but what Cotton would give for the bag to have been a false lead. For the picture to portray a mother still alive and able to cuddle her baby.

  Five past five. The raid had ended but blackout wouldn’t come off until 8.40 a.m. As the car crawled at ten miles an hour, Cotton, the bearer of bad news, did not want to go where they were going.

  Under the cover of his coat, he shone his electric torch on the photograph. Maple Greenhill’s smile was broad, he could almost see that she must have burst into laughter as soon as the shutter clicked. Maple had enjoyed life.

  In last night’s raid, many had lost their lives, but dwelling on one, Cotton vowed to catch the man who had ended that life.

  Except, as the car tracked tramlines, a trick that in the dark lessened the chance of straying to the other side of the road, Cotton privately agreed with Shepherd: so far, they had sweet Fanny Adams.

  Chapter Six

  December 2019

  Jack

  Midnight. St Nicholas’s churchyard. By the faint light of a lamp-post on the pavement beyond the railing, Jack Harmon bent to make out the name.

  GEORGE COTTON

  1894–1979

  Simple facts, nothing to get his teeth into. No dates with which to nourish his need to flesh out the dead. For example, if a person died on their birthday you could imagine they’d been fighting a life-limiting illness and had exerted the last of their will to round off their life. Those whose death was in early January had wanted a final Christmas.

  Shifting his gaze to an adjacent grave, Jack read that John and Victoria Cotton had died on the same day in 1935. Innocent victims of the Welwyn Garden City railway accident. Odd phrasing. Was the driver considered guilty? A train driver himself, Jack blanched at the idea.

  After dark the cemetery gates were locked, but Jack knew a way in. He liked the prospect of the Cotton family meeting again. Did you haunt where you had been buried or where you died? Ghosts were not limited by geography. Their graves were their resting places.

  These days it was all about confectionery and dressing up. Jack never abandoned hope that one night, wandering in a cemetery between the serried ranks of dead, one person would join him. His mother.

  Her grave was miles away in Sussex but she was murdered beside the River Thames, ten minutes from the cemetery, two years after George Cotton’s death. Yesterday, Jack’s son had asked if the dead did walk, did they take it in turns? The little boy had worked out that the dead outnumbered the living, there would be a crowd of ghosts. Bella, Jack’s ex, had been cross with Jack: You tell them such
crap.

  Without – literally – meeting a soul, Jack climbed back through a gap in the cemetery wall, crept alongside the ancient walls of the darkened church and out through the lychgate onto Chiswick Mall. Like the cemetery, the street was timeless. Victorian wrought-iron lamps, now casting bleak LED light onto cobbles, had once hissed with gas. In the threaded dark, cars became hansom cabs.

  He told Stella she had rescued him from his half-life. Well, now she had put him back there. Saying that had been a mistake. Stella shunned even a whiff of dependency. A woman of action, she had no truck with ghosts, or signs Jack believed defined fate. Stupid him, his signs, ghosts, amulets had led him here. Alone.

  Jack felt Stella’s absence like a death. He was the walking dead.

  Jack felt a weight in his pocket and took out the pebble. A driver on the London Underground, he’d come off the dead-late shift on the District line at Ealing Broadway. He’d walked through the terminated train checking for passengers, asleep or drunk or both. He’d found the pebble on the floor of the last car and, picking it up, saw a face had been scratched into the flint, eyes and mouth wide as if in horror. He intended to hand it to Lost Property, knowing they’d laugh at him for bothering, but now, the aghast face was company.

  The tide was receding. The causeway was littered with flotsam, broken glass and bits of wood which, lit by the waxing moon, looked like limbs. The mud gleamed as if phosphorous. Careful not to slip in his rubber-soled shoes Jack went down slime-ridden river stairs onto the beach. He walked a rotted plank to the causeway and from there to the eyot, a scrap of land only accessible by foot at low tide.

  Jack Harmon walked the streets of London. It was his habit to follow home late commuters, night-shift workers, couples keeping their distance, love long over. He’d linger in shadows to keep watch on his chosen house until the grey light of dawn. Jack knew most of us trust that bad things only happen to other people. Set in our routines – dog-walking, jogging, journeying to and from work or the supermarket – we don’t see what else is happening.