by Mark Dawson
He swallowed. “Sir.”
McCartney clasped him on the shoulder. “Well done for yesterday, Charlie. Finding chummy downstairs. Very good work. Where was he?”
“Working at the Royalty Hotel.”
“And he made a run for it.”
“I caught him outside.”
“You have to ask yourself why he’d do that.”
“It is suspicious.”
“I’ve spoken to Tanner,” Frank said to him. “I’m doing the interview.”
“Your technique goes before you. But take Charlie with you, sport. Won’t hurt to have a couple of you in there.”
Frank turned for the door. Charlie caught him rolling his eyes.
“Fine, sir.”
o o o
THEY WENT DOWN TO THE CELLS TOGETHER. Charlie felt awkward and he knew Frank was feeling the same way. He looked like a dog’s dinner, his suit rumpled and his shirt dirty. They reached the reception space outside the cells and Frank sat down, passing a hand over his face. He looked done in.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look—”
“I’m fine, Charlie. We can be professional, but that’s it. Alright?”
“Fine. I—”
“Let’s just get it over with.”
He took Coyle’s C.R.O. file and started to flip through it.
An interview room served all six cells, a two-way mirror set into the wall so that observers in the corridor could watch the proceedings inside. A uniform Constable sat guard. Charlie peered through the two-way. Coyle was waiting. The uniform nodded in Coyle’s direction. “Might look the part, but he’s not fooling no-one. Tries to give out the impression he’s not bothered but you know it’s all show. Terrified, he is. Been smoking like it’s going out of fashion.”
Frank closed the file and jabbed a finger at Charlie. “Right. I do the talking. You stand at the back and shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.”
“Whatever you want.”
He went inside; Charlie followed. Coyle swivelled his neck around to get a look at them.
“Christ’s sake, what happened to your boat?”
Frank moved around behind him. Coyle stubbed out his cigarette in a full ashtray. He fumbled another fag from the packet, fingers shaking. Frank stood there, saying nothing, for a long minute. Coyle couldn’t take it—his fidgeting got worse. “Come on, squire, what’s the game?” He started to stand.
“Sit down.” Frank took off his jacket, folded it neatly, and laid it over the back of the spare chair. His shirt was filthy, with dirty crescents beneath the arms. He withdrew three mortuary photographs of a woman from the evidence folder and laid them face up on the table. “Take a look at that, Eddie. Go on—give it a good look. Recognise her?”
“It’s Connie.”
Frank didn’t reply, opened the folder again and took out a selection of crime scene photographs. He laid them on the table until it was covered with stark glossies: a woman’s body laid over the bed, cuts and slices across her skin, blood everywhere. “What about her?”
“C-c-connie.”
Frank let the atmosphere stew him for a moment. “Why’d you run, Eddie?”
“What?”
“You scarpered yesterday. Why was that?”
“I was scared, wasn’t I.”
“Of what?”
“You lot. The police.”
“Why—have you done something wrong?”
“No. You must see it all the time, you coppers. Blokes like me, you see Old Bill and you think the worst. And then that makes you think you’ve buggered it up somehow.”
“Guilty conscience, you mean?”
“I don’t have no guilty conscience.”
“So you haven’t buggered up?”
“No, sir.”
“So why do you think you’re here?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Less of the attitude, son. You’re in all kinds of trouble. Don’t make it worse by messing us around.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’ve had my share of problems with Old Bill. I thought, when your man over there showed up, I thought I was getting done again.”
“You do have form, don’t you? I’ve seen your record. A couple of breakings last year. An assault the year before that. Rape. You’re used to these cosy little chats. What you might call an occupational hazard for a toerag like you. Not something that’d worry you all that much, I wouldn’t’ve thought. So why are your hands shaking now, Eddie?”
“I’m not— I’m—”
“But then Constance got murdered. And we know you used to knock her about. And then you run off when we turn up to talk to you? How’d you think that looks?”
“I didn’t do nothing! Honest to God, I never bloody touched her.”
“It all makes you look guilty, Eddie. Guilty as sin. We found yesterday’s newspaper at your gaff—open at the page with the article about her being topped. Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s happened. Why didn’t you come forward? You knew bloody well we’d want to have a word.”
“I didn’t—”
“The fake name at the hotel. Then you tried to run. You’ve got a great big guilty sign around your neck.”
“I was seeing Connie on the side, alright?”
“You’re married?”
“Yes, and I didn’t want my old lady to know. We’ve got two little ones. If she knew I had a bit on the side she’d throw me out of the house.”
“You were worried your wife would find out you had a bit on the side so you decided not to come forward when the girl you were screwing got murdered? Come on, Eddie, you expect me to believe that? That’s not nearly good enough.”
He turned to Charlie: “I didn’t do nothing!”
“You’re talking to me,” Frank bellowed. “Look at me.” Coyle did as he was told. “That’s better. You didn’t used to beat her?”
“Who told you that?”
“Yes or no?”
He pushed himself out of the chair. “You’ve been talking to that little bitch, ain’t you?”
“Got a temper, have you, Eddie?
“She’s a nasty little whore, she is.”
“Fly off the handle sometimes?”
“You don’t want to pay no attention to what she says. She’s a lying little slut—always had it in for me, ever since Connie found her.”
Frank slammed his palms on the table. The ashtray jumped; Coyle jumped; Charlie jumped. “Eddie—we know you used to hit her. Don’t play games with me, son, alright? I’m not in the bloody mood.”
Coyle choked smoke, dragged in more, his hand quivering. “Alright. Once or twice. She had a way about her. If I’d had a skinful sometimes she’d start nagging me and I’d have to give her a quick straightener, nothing serious, just remind her who’s boss.”
“When she deserved it?”
“Exactly.” He grinned, nervously, yellow teeth; all boys together. “You know what birds can be like, squire. They get under the skin, don’t they?”
Frank struck him across the cheek with a stiff right. Coyle swung against the side of his seat, the lit fag flying out of his mouth. “Like that?” He hit him again with a left hook, knocking him back the other way, a streamer of bloody spit flung out of his mouth. “Or like that?”
Charlie took a step towards the table; Frank glared at him, froze him where he was.
“Jesus,” Coyle was whimpering.
Frank placed both hands on the table and leaned in close. “Listen to me very carefully, you nasty little shit. I’m going to ask you some questions. You are going to answer them. If you make me think you’re lying, just for one second, I’m going to come down on you so hard you won’t know what day of the bloody week it is. I’ll charge you with whatever I can think of that’ll send you down for the longest time. If you’re not swinging before spring’s out you’ll
be in stir until nineteen-bloody-eighty. That clear enough for you?”
He didn’t answer, whimpering quietly to himself.
“Is that clear enough?”
He wiped away trailers of spit. “I didn’t do nothing.”
“Then you’d better start persuading me. How’d you meet her?”
“At the Trocadero Brasserie.”
“Go on.”
“I was out for a bit of a drink and a bit of quim, and I saw her and said hello. She said she was there to meet a fellow she knew but he’d stood her up. I bought her a drink and got her chatting. She let me buy her dinner. I was a bit drunk and I don’t suppose I was feeling all that particular.”
“Then what?”
“Not much. We’ve been seeing each other two or three times a week. Relaxed, like. Nothing formal.”
“For how long?”
“Couple of months. But it wasn’t serious—we weren’t going steady or nothing like that. We’d meet and have dinner in Soho then go back to her flat—she rented a drum on Wardour Street. I was getting a bit bored with it all, to be honest. Thinking of knocking the whole thing on the head.”
“She let you screw her?”
“After about two weeks of asking. But she had to be in the mood, see? Normally it was ‘I’m too tired’ or some other nonsense excuse.”
“And that bothered you.”
“Too bloody right, it did. It’s a man’s right, ain’t it, conjugal relations with his bird.”
“That’s why you hit her?”
“I said it was only once or twice.”
“I don’t believe you, Eddie. You hit her all the time.”
“No, guv. Hardly never.”
“She wouldn’t have sex with you and you hated her for it.”
“No—”
“Yes. It made you feel inadequate, didn’t it, Eddie? Made you feel less like a man, a woman telling you when you could and couldn’t have it away. Like you said, it’s not a bird’s place to tell a fella when he can and can’t. Is that what happened with Phyllis Brown, too?”
“They never charged me for that.”
“Only because they buggered up the collar and your brief was a slippery bastard. We both know you raped her.”
“I never!”
“When Connie wouldn’t let you have it you got angry, didn’t you?”
Coyle turned to Charlie. “He’s putting words in my mouth.”
“Don’t look at him like that, Eddie, he’s not going to help you. I’m your only hope here. Where were you on Friday night?”
“At home.”
“With who?”
“The wife. I had a bath and went to bed.”
“What about Saturday?”
“With Connie.”
“Who else?”
“Just her.”
“Monday night?”
“At home.” He looked at Charlie again. “I never did what he’s saying I did.”
Frank slapped him again. “I’m talking to you Eddie, not him.”
“Frank.”
Coyle had started to whimper.
“What happened, Eddie? You wanted a bit of slap and tickle and she said no again? She had the nerve to say no? To you? Made you angry, didn’t it, Eddie? Really took the biscuit. You’ve been working on her for weeks and she hardly ever lets you have your end away. It’s your right. A man’s right. You gave her a cuff, like you normally did when she said no, only this time that wasn’t enough. Maybe she got bolshy. Stood up to you? She really had to learn a lesson, didn’t she, Eddie?”
“No.”
“The silly little bitch needed to be taught a lesson. Who the boss was. So you put your hands around her throat. You put your filthy hands around her throat and you squeezed. Admit it!”
“I didn’t!”
“You squeezed until she blacked out. Only that wasn’t enough either, was it? Not this time. She had you really angry—the full red bloody mist. So you got a knife from the kitchen and you stabbed her in the throat with it, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You cut her up.”
“No no no no.”
“Yes, Eddie. Yes yes yes YES!”
The door opened.
Frank turned the table over, yelled into Coyle’s face: “TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!”
Their father was there.
McCartney behind him.
Bob Peters behind him.
They must have been watching through the two-way.
“Frank, that’s enough,” their father said.
Frank didn’t hear him, or ignored it; he grabbed Coyle under the armpits and hauled him out of the chair, ran him backwards across the room, slammed him hard into the wall. “Tell me what happened or I’ll break your bloody neck.”
“Frank!”
Coyle gasped something.
“What?”
“I used to pimp her,” he whispered. “She used to tom for me, alright?”
“Frank, let him go.”
“Who else?”
“No-one.”
“Molly Jenkins?”
“Son—”
Coyle looked at William Murphy, at Charlie; doubt flickering for a moment.
“No—”
“Annie Stokes?”
“No—”
William Murphy laid a hand on Frank’s shoulder and tugged him away. “That’ll do, son.”
Coyle sobbed: “I swear, guv. On my mother’s life. I know I was awful to Connie, God rest her, but I didn’t do her in like they said in the paper. I couldn’t. I’m a bastard, I know it, I’m a dirty rotten bastard but I ain’t like that.”
Frank got up and stepped away from the overturned table, straightening his rumpled shirt. He righted the table and picked up the chairs. Coyle sank down the wall, buried his head in his hands and sobbed.
Frank went outside; Charlie, his father and McCartney followed.
“What are you doing?”
Frank grabbed Charlie by the lapels, shoved him back against the wall and leant in. “If you ever interrupt me while I’m interrogating a suspect again I’ll put your teeth down your throat. I don’t care if you’re my bloody brother. Understand?”
William Murphy put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “That’s enough, Francis.”
Charlie struggled, but Frank laid his forearm across his windpipe and held him there.
Bob Peters yanked at him; Frank was too strong.
“Let him go, Frank.”
Frank released him.
“You always were a pansy,” he spat. “Take a statement from him on the bloody pimping then let him go.”
“What?”
“He didn’t do the murders.”
Charlie turned to McCartney. “Sir?”
“He’s right. Get someone to check with his wife—sounds like he’s alibi’d, at least for Jenkins. Go on, sport. Get him down on paper then let him out. He’s not our man.”
CHAPTER 44
FRANK HAD GONE OUT ONTO THE STREET after the interview with Coyle.
Damned Charlie.
Damned fool.
He needed to get away from him before he did something even more stupid.
He’d been out all morning, all afternoon and all evening. He’d visited the scenes of all three of the murders, reviewing the work that was going on around each of them. The door-to-door enquiries were finished and nothing new had come of them. Notices had been pasted on the walls and hung from the lamp-posts, offering £50 for information that might lead to an arrest. It wasn’t out of the question that something might turn up. The underworld had no reason to protect a murderer—a maniac doing away with brasses was bad for business.
Ten o’clock.
The German bombers had left, leaving behind fresh columns of black and grey that piled up into the dusky sky. The East End still smoked grimly, the dying sunlight breaking through the black curtain in feeble shafts. Berwick Street market was closed for the day and the barrows were being wheeled away. Rubbish bobbed in waterlog
ged gutters and rats scuttled across the cobbles, gorging themselves on fish-heads, rotten fruit, stale bread. A fire tender was parked next to a café, the crew sitting on the kerb drinking cups of coffee. Their uniforms were black with soot and they stared blankly into the street, exhausted. None of them spoke.
Only a handful of girls were out tonight. He spoke to them, showed Eve’s picture, but none of them recognised her or were in any mood to talk. They were nervous, frazzled, fearful—death felt close and sudden. Bombs and a stranger’s knife. Blown to bits in the street or gutted in a walk-up flat.
He kept thinking of Charlie.
Couldn’t help it.
They’d been close, once. He remembered the way Charlie used to look at him when they were teenagers. His father said he idolised him and Frank could see that that was true, the way younger brothers often look up to older siblings. He remembered Charlie nursing him after he was sent to rehabilitate at home. Frank still had the picture: he was propped up in bed, his face and torso swathed in bandages, a glass of home-made lemonade in his hand held aloft in salute. Charlie was next to him with his arm around his shoulders.
Seemed like years ago now. A different time.
The bitterness changed everything.
He remembered their first proper row. They must have been in their early twenties—a drinking session at Christmas had turned nasty and Charlie had lost his temper. Frank remembered exactly what Charlie had said, over and over again: “You don’t know how hard it is to be your brother.” Frank apologised without knowing what he was apologising for, but it hadn’t made any difference. Charlie just got angrier, and Frank had given up before they came to blows. The argument had been repeated several times since, usually when they were drinking, and Charlie’s reaction was worse every time.
Frank didn’t know what to do.
And he didn’t see much hope.
His meandering route led him back to Savile Row. He climbed the stairs to his office, his fists clenched with frustration: Coyle a dead end, Drake a dead end, Jenkins a dead end, Connie a dead end, Annie a dead end. Duncan Johnson a ghost. Charlie in his way. He pulled the black-out aside and stared into the gloom. The fires were still burning in the east, a skirting of glowing orange leeching over the tops of the buildings.
The Ripper was out there.