by R. N. Morris
He opened it out to read the main headline on the first page. BOSCH BUTCHER FROM BUSH FREED.
He scanned the report underneath. It was clear that the writer’s view was that a terrible error had been made in releasing William Egger, who was described as the ‘prime and only suspect in the murder of Eve Cardew’. The reader was directed to an editorial inside, which Quinn declined to turn to. He handed the paper back with a shrug.
‘It does not concern you?’
‘It concerns me that news of Egger’s release got out so quickly. Someone must have leaked it. I have a good idea who.’
Kell took a few short breaths. ‘This is not what I expected.’
‘I can’t control what’s written in the papers.’
‘Oh, but you can. You must.’
‘My job is to catch criminals.’
‘We had a criminal. You let him go.’
‘He didn’t do it.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘If you’re proven wrong …’
‘I won’t be.’
‘Do you know what your job really is, Quinn?’
‘I just told you. To catch criminals.’
‘No. That’s what we in the espionage business call your cover.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t …’
‘Your real job is …’
Quinn hung on with bated breath as he waited for Kell to master his own breathing and finish his sentence.
‘… to create the right narrative. How you do that is by catching criminals. But the catching of the criminals is not your ultimate objective. It is not the point.’
‘It is not?’
‘The truth is not as important as you may think.’ Kell blurted this out quickly with a hot flash of impatience, as if he was answering some objection Quinn had raised.
Quinn said nothing, but made a mental note that it was not he who had brought up the truth.
‘Who actually did or did not kill this girl is not important at all. What is important is that the police are seen to be swift and remorseless in resolving the case. Certainty is more important than truth, Quinn.’
‘This is because of the war?’
‘Of course it’s because of the bloody war, you idiot! Everything you do is because of the war. In arresting the German butcher, we showed that we were in control. Certainty, clarity, decisiveness. Furthermore, we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect villain. A German butcher, Quinn! His nationality and profession played perfectly in the national consciousness. Do you release what you have let slip through your fingers? Have you any conception what you have done? In place of certainty, clarity and decisiveness, you have sown confusion. You have confused your men. And now, with this …’ Kell brandished the newspaper, ‘you have confused the public. It will not end well. Well, at least this Simpkins chap has a German mother. I very strongly recommend that you find him and find him quick.’
‘We are doing everything we can.’
‘Are you, Quinn? I wonder.’
Kell shook his head and took himself from the room, which suddenly seemed very quiet without his ratcheted breathing.
FORTY-ONE
Millicent Jones stood on the corner of Goldhawk Road and Pennard Road. She saw the man watching her from the other side of the road. He was silhouetted in the muted glow from a nearby street light, its beam dimmed and narrowed so that it would not be visible from the air. There was something odd about his shape, she noticed. He seemed to be wearing a short cape, or perhaps a shawl around his shoulders. It was as if his body was formed in sections that did not fit together so well. His face was hidden in shadow but she knew that he was watching her and she knew what he wanted.
She knew too that she would give it to him. No, not give it. She would make him pay, of course. But he would get what he wanted from her, all right.
Why else would a girl be standing on a street corner at this time of night?
She had learnt early on that there was something men wanted that only women and girls could give them. She was eleven years old and the man who taught her the lesson was a ‘friend’ of her mother’s she’d been told to call Uncle Pete.
She saw the looks that had passed between her mother and Uncle Pete. And gathered from the thrupenny bit she was given afterwards that more than looks had passed too.
And so she had learnt her second lesson. That this thing men wanted, they were prepared to pay for.
It was soon after that that her mother had put her out on the streets and told her not to come back until she had earned her keep.
‘You know what to do, girl. I made sure of that,’ her mother had said, as if it was something she should thank her for.
She also handed down to Millie all the essential trappings of the trade: the high-heeled sandals, the paintbox of cosmetics, the cabinet of perfumes and cures, the low-cut black dress trimmed with tassels, the string of black beads, or ‘pearls’ as her mother insisted on calling them, and of course, the bedraggled boa that made her sneeze and brought her out in a rash every time she wrapped it round her neck. Millie believed the feathers had once been white, but now they were a grubby grey and reminded her of wounded pigeons.
She looked again across the street. The man was still there, watching, an uncertain presence swaying in and out of the light. He was a shy one, all right. What was he waiting for? She could die of old age waiting for this one to make a move.
He should shit or get off the pot and that was the truth.
She fluffed her boa encouragingly and extended one leg through the slit in the side of her dress.
It was enough to stir him into action. Lord knew men were simple creatures. Like clockwork toys, they were. The glimpse of a girl’s knee was enough to wind them up and set them in motion.
He stepped forward out of the cone of dim light and was swallowed for a moment by the inky blackness of the night. Millie could hear his footsteps as he crossed the empty street. Her body relaxed into a lolling posture as she waited for him.
And then he was there in front of her.
‘You took your time, dincha, mate? Whatcha afraid of? I ain’t gonna bite.’
The man said nothing in reply. He simply took hold of her arm at the bicep in a vice-like grip.
‘Come with me!’ His voice was as urgent as his actions now, as he dragged her along towards the alley where, by day, Shepherd’s Bush Market was situated.
FORTY-TWO
Quinn stared at the telephone on the desk a split second before it began to ring. It was almost as if his look had provoked the remorseless clanging. More likely, the contraption had made a small noise, a vibration or a click, prior to ringing out in earnest, and he had subconsciously responded to that. The noise set his nerves on edge, but he was reluctant to answer the call. He was aware that this was not his office and therefore not his phone. He was afraid that he would be placed in a false position and obliged to account for himself with needless explanations. The imposter had made an imposter of him.
But there was also the possibility that it might be important.
‘Quinn.’
There was silence at the other end of the line. Or rather, not quite silence. It was the crackle of wax melting in your ear after one or two drops of hydrogen peroxide have been administered.
Eventually, a thin, crumpled voice formed itself out of the crackles. ‘Am I speaking to DCI Coddington?’
‘No. DCI Quinn. I have taken over from Coddington.’
There was a pause as the voice took in this information.
‘To whom am I speaking?’ prompted Quinn.
‘DI Driscoll here, from Shepherd’s Bush Station. I think you’d better get over here.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘We’ve got another one for you.’
‘Another what?’ Even as he asked the question, Quinn knew what the answer would be.
‘Dead body. Another girl, murdered. She was found an hour ago, in the market just off t
he Goldhawk Road. We think it might be connected to your case.’
‘I’ll meet you there.’
DI Driscoll shone his flashlight down on the body of the young woman slumped inside the arch of the railway viaduct. The beam flitted about before settling on the blood that had soaked into her dress. The quivering spotlight then zagged up to show the gaping wound in her throat where the blood had evidently come from.
The ground began to quake. The clatter of a train overhead momentarily drowned out what DI Driscoll was saying. But even without that, Quinn was finding it hard to take it in. He felt a creeping numbness come over him.
Driscoll directed his flashlight to the girl’s face. Quinn knew that he always hoped for too much from the facial expressions of the dead. But usually what he saw there was only what he would expect, often less, as if death acted as an emotional mute. What might have been terror at the moment of demise somehow settled into an expression of mild surprise, or annoyance perhaps. Always, though, there was an element of defeat in the expression.
‘One of the stallholders, a Mr Mills, who has the carpet and rug stall, found her when he was setting up. He thought it was a tramp at first, when he saw her feet sticking out. They get a fair few of them, so it was a natural assumption to make. I’ll draw your attention to this object …’ Driscoll led Quinn further into the arch. The flashlight beam lapped out like the tongue of an eager dog, hunting down clues. It settled on a glinting flash of metal. ‘I had my men leave it where we found it. It’s a meat cleaver.’ Driscoll waited a moment for that to sink in. Then, not trusting that it had, added: ‘The kind used by butchers. As you can see, the blade is streaked with blood.’
Quinn felt the ground tremble again, although there was no train passing over this time. He reached out to steady himself against the curve of the arch. The bricks felt cold and damp to his touch. The arch echoed with the constant, even drip of moisture, like the tick of a clock measuring out time. For one brief moment he imagined the slime covering the bricks to be blood. And the liquid he could hear dripping was blood too.
The new Shepherd’s Bush Market had only been open a few months. It was hardly the most propitious beginning for the enterprise; first the war and now this. The stalls had sprouted up like brightly coloured mushrooms alongside the railway viaduct that ran between Uxbridge Road and Goldhawk Road. Some of the traders had taken over the arches, which gave them an air of permanence that the canvas stalls lacked. The market was uncharacteristically quiet today. Uniformed police blocked it off at either end. The traders busied themselves with grumbling, flashing resentful glances towards the police. They gave the impression of having been cheated out of something valuable, which they had – the morning’s takings. One or two appeared determined to stay cheerful, or perhaps it was simply habit that had them whistling breezily only yards from the corpse of a murder victim.
‘Do we know who she is?’
‘Millicent Jones, a known prostitute.’
‘What made you think this is connected with my case?’
‘Well, the meat cleaver, of course.’
A white blur on the ground near the body caught Quinn’s attention. He had Driscoll shine the beam on it. A cascade of dingy feathers formed in the gloom, some of them stained red with her blood. It looked like an exploded chicken.
‘She doesn’t seem the type for handing out white feathers,’ said Driscoll.
Quinn thought back to his own recent encounter with the prostitute in King’s Cross. He remembered the parasol with which she had attempted to entice him. These girls always liked to have some cheap prop to advertise their business. ‘She wasn’t. That’s a feather boa.’
Driscoll lifted his head and looked at Quinn thoughtfully.
‘Did you find anything in her mouth?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Did you look in her mouth?’
‘I did not,’ Driscoll answered firmly, as if Quinn had just asked him to commit an act of violation.
‘Would you care to do so now, please?’
‘Is that not a job for the Medical Examiner?’
‘If you are too squeamish, then please give your flashlight to me and I will look.’
‘Squeamish? You think I am squeamish?’ Driscoll prized open the dead girl’s mouth and shone his torch inside. ‘What am I looking for?’
‘It should be obvious.’
‘I can see nothing.’
‘There is no white feather in there?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you. That’s all I need to know.’
Crisp footsteps behind him drew Quinn around. Leversedge stood at the entrance to the arch looking in. The two men exchanged an uneasy glance. ‘This is a turn-up for the books, wouldn’t you say, guv?’
‘It’s not the same killer.’
Leversedge drew his mouth down in a sceptical moue. ‘Bit too early to say that for sure, don’t you think? Especially considering how close we are to the Eggers’ shop. And what with you just letting him go, it doesn’t look too good, if you don’t mind me saying.’ Leversedge held up his palms to fend off any objection from Quinn. ‘I’m only saying what everyone’s thinking.’
Quinn narrowed his eyes to consider Leversedge. ‘The method is completely different to Eve Cardew’s murder. And besides, do you really think that if William Egger were so stupid as to commit this murder so soon after his release he would do it so close to his home, with a butcher’s meat cleaver which he would leave at the scene?’
‘That all smacks of psychology, guv, if you don’t mind me saying. There’s nothing wrong with psychology, don’t get me wrong. But in my experience, you can’t base a whole case on psychology alone. It confuses the jurors. No, what jurors like is a bloody meat cleaver found next to the dead body. That’s the kind of clue the jury can understand. The same’s true for the general public. You don’t need psychology to explain this. Fella’s a monster, can’t control his murderous impulses. He’s German, after all, isn’t he?’
‘You don’t believe that.’
Leversedge gave a non-committal shrug.
‘Someone’s set this up to incriminate Egger.’
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
‘To throw us off the scent.’
Leversedge paused to think about what Quinn had said. ‘You don’t want me to pull Egger in again, then?’
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘We ought at least to dust the cleaver for prints, don’t you think?’
Quinn studied Leversedge’s face carefully for a moment before replying, ‘If you wish.’
Leversedge’s mouth assumed its downward curve again, although this time it seemed to be communicating satisfaction.
FORTY-THREE
Mattilde Simpkins was dressed exactly as she had been the last time she had opened the door to Quinn. But there was something forlorn about her appearance now that Quinn had not noticed before. What had seemed mildly eccentric then now struck him as positively deranged. She was dressed for a performance that she would never give. He noticed a stale odour coming off her, imperfectly masked by a liberal dousing of lavender-scented eau de toilette. Her black evening gown was faded and frayed at the cuffs, specked with pale stains. The plaits of her hair hung stiffly. Almost overnight she had become frail.
But the change that had come over her was most evident in her face. It was not simply that she looked older and more haggard. The life had gone out of her.
Her expression had lost its elasticity. Her jowls sagged. Her mouth was slack and affectless. Her eyes, rimmed red from crying, stared blankly without registering what she saw. He had seen such faces in Colney Hatch. On occasion, his own face had stared back at him from a mirror in a similar way.
Her look of stupor alerted him to another possibility. He sniffed the air more carefully and identified a whiff of strong liquor in amongst her other odours. She swayed within the door frame as she squinted at him. At last he must have come into focus. ‘It’s you. You
’re the policeman.’ There was a slow, tacky deliberateness to her speech, as if she was trying very hard to appear sober. She took in the three men who were there with Quinn. ‘Are they policemen too?’
‘Yes. This is Detective Inspector Leversedge, Detective Sergeant Inchball and Detective Constable Willoughby.’
‘Have you found my son?’
‘No. Have you heard from him?’
Whereas once such a question might have provoked a tirade of complaints, she simply shook her head blankly.
‘Leversedge.’
At Quinn’s cue, Leversedge held up a baffling piece of paper. ‘I have a warrant to search these premises.’
It was as if a switch had been thrown. All the emotion that had been lacking from her responses so far surged to the surface. Her face contracted into a clench of self-pity and a wail like steel being lathed came out of it. ‘Noooooo!’ She turned her back on them and fled into the depths of the basement flat.
Quinn followed her in. ‘Mrs Simpkins, please! We need to look in Felix’s room. That’s all. We need to find Felix, to make sure that he’s all right. To help him. He may be in danger. That’s why we need to find him, so we can help him. There may be something in his room that will lead us to him. Please be strong, Mrs Simpkins. If you help us, it will be better for Felix, I promise you.’
But she disappeared into a bedroom and slammed the door in his face.
Quinn turned and gave the nod to the other men, who set about peering into the other rooms with practised efficiency.
In truth, there weren’t many doors to check, so it wasn’t long before Inchball announced the discovery of Felix’s bedroom with a quiet, ‘Guv.’
The room was in a state of semi-disarray, like an argument that one party had walked away from. The mess made the room look even smaller than it was, and it was small enough to begin with. The single bed had not been made. Clothes were strewn across the floor and the bed, as well as draped over the back of a wooden chair. A culture of mould was flourishing in a teacup on the bedside table. The wardrobe door hung open. Each of the drawers in a chest of drawers was pulled out to a progressively greater extent, so that it looked like a small flight of steps. ‘Evidently, he left in a hurry,’ said Leversedge. ‘And his devoted mother hasn’t been in since.’
