Sharkey was hovering as usual. He didn’t do many things well but he was very good at that. I was only glad he hadn’t seen me accepting a bribe. ‘Stinking Krauts,’ he sneered. ‘Should have gone back to their own country.’
‘They would not be welcome in the Reich,’ I pointed out and Sharkey sniffed.
‘Hitler is right about one thing,’ he said. ‘They caused the last war and now they’ve caused another.’
‘What?’ I burst out. ‘You think the Kaiser was a Jew?’
‘No but he was controlled by Jewish bankers and they own or control all the armaments factories.’
‘You don’t mind buying cigarettes from Mr Abrahams,’ I pointed out.
‘Has he been in yet?’ Sharkey reached over for the book.
‘No and he won’t be,’ I told him. ‘He was born here.’
‘Still a Jew.’
‘We are not fighting the Jews.’ I swallowed a gutful of obscenities.
‘Not yet but we will be.’
‘I can’t argue with you.’ I viewed the man with renewed disgust.
‘Because you know I’m right.’
‘Because I’m not going to tell you exactly what I think of ignorant bigots in front of a fellow officer.’
Briggs perked up. ‘Don’t you mind me, madam.’
Constable Walker burst in, his sandy hair – never sleek – wildly flopping over his face. His complexion – usually Sackwater grey – was ripe russet. His sheep eyes rolled and his arms windmilled like Al Jolson blaring that he was on his way to Swanee to see his mammy and tell her how he loved her.
‘Muh.’ Walker leaned on the doorpost, bent over fighting for breath. ‘Muh.’ He looked worse than Gregson with half a lung missing. ‘Murder,’ he managed at last.
36
BREAKFAST WITH POOKY
Sharkey was there before me because I had to go round the desk.
‘Murder?’ He grasped the constable’s shoulders. ‘Who? Where? Speak up, man.’
Walker got his breathing almost under control.
‘Mr Sk-Skotter Jackson, the accountant on Dogeye Lane.’
‘How and when?’ I hurried over.
‘Stabbed,’ Walker panted. ‘Ju-just found him.’
‘Another?’ Sharkey’s eyes flicked from side to side. Even he must have realised he was biting off more than he could chew. He hesitated.
‘Your case. I’ll help,’ I conceded to close the deal quickly. Better to be second fiddle than left out of the orchestra.
Sharkey nodded and we dashed to the back room.
‘Who’s there now?’ I called over my shoulder, praying he had not left the scene unattended.
‘Constable Bank-Anthony…’ Walker swallowed, ‘sent me for help, ma’am.’
I was just slipping my gas-mask strap over my shoulder when another little face poked anxiously in.
‘Is she here yet?’
‘What the hell do you call this?’ The Shark pointed at the wall.
Dodo quailed. ‘The station clock, sir.’
Sharkey inhaled.
‘You go ahead,’ I told him hastily before he really let rip. ‘I’ll deal with her and catch up with you.’
My fellow inspector needed no more encouragement. With a little luck, he could persuade the press that he had been first on the scene and it was a good while since his photo had been in the Gazette. ‘She’d better have a bloody good excuse.’ He ripped the door from Dodo’s grasp. ‘Well come on, man.’
Walker had been in the process of unfastening his chinstrap but he hastily clipped it up again and followed.
‘Oh.’ Dodo winced as if I had raised a hand to her.
‘So why are you late?’ I asked as patiently as I could. ‘It’s by no means the first time either.’
‘It is the ninth,’ Dodo agreed miserably, ‘and usually it is because Mrs Church does not like me to set off without a delicious and nourishing cooked breakfast in my tumbly and Mr Church wants to chitter-chatter and it seems rude to cut his wizard stories and side-splitting jokes short.’
My mother had never cooked me a breakfast. I didn’t even know she could. It was a job that had begun and ended with Pooky. Also my father could have won prizes for monosyllabic grumpiness in the morning.
‘So what happened today?’ I asked, trying not to sound as jealous as I felt.
‘Oh.’ Dodo turned a sheepish pink. ‘The bus was late.’
She shuffled towards the desk.
‘You may have forgotten,’ I reminded her, ‘that I know exactly where you live, having lived there myself for many years, and you do not need a bus to get from Felicity House to Sackwater Central.’
‘But I was not there last night.’ Dodo turned a good Suffolk pink – the sort of thing you see on the walls of thatched cottages.
‘Aye-aye,’ Brigsy chortled in the knowing way of men who know nothing.
‘So where were you?’ I asked.
‘I went to see Daddy. He was in Ipswich on business but the train was cancelled because of that explosion at Felixstowe and I had to get a bus and it was late,’ Dodo recited to an invisible audience over my head.
That much rang true. We had all heard how a munitions train at Felixstowe docks had blown up three days ago and I knew there had been a senior police officers’ conference in Ipswich over the weekend. There was another coming up soon that Superintendent Vesty had roped me into, Lord knew why. I had never been to a meeting yet where the main purpose wasn’t to arrange the next meeting.
‘I haven’t got time for this,’ I said. ‘But you will not be late again.’
The pink was streaked with white now.
‘Oh but what will happen to me if I am?’
I fixed her eyes – no easy feat because they were flitting everywhere. ‘Listen to me, Constable Chivers. You will not be late again. Now come with me. We have a murder to investigate.’
‘On Dogeye Lane?’ Dodo stepped back, catching the rim of her helmet on the wall. ‘Ouchy.’
‘I told you not to say that.’
‘I am sorry to disagree, ma’am’ – Dodo folded her arms – ‘especially on such a lovely morning, but you told me not to say ouchy-wouchy.’
‘Ouch will suffice in future.’ I put on my helmet. ‘How did you know it was on Dogeye Lane?’
‘Oh.’ Dodo Chivers twiddled her thumbs. ‘I heard somebody say it.’
She was right about one thing. It was a lovely autumn day.
‘Who?’
‘Um, Nippy Walker.’
‘Well, let’s see if you can be one yourself.’ I strode briskly off, Dodo trotting at my heel like a faithful terrier full of mischief and tricks. I had a reason for staying back to admonish my constable other than saving her from being skinned alive. I wanted to prove something and, after they had got the car out and running and gone round the block and down busy High Road East, I still had a chance to do so. We cut through Jericho Alley, breaking into a gentle trot.
‘Cannot we slow down, Inspector?’
‘Of course we can,’ I agreed, ‘but we shan’t.’
‘Oh but your gorgeous legs are longer than my gorgeous legs.’
Life was too short to correct her on everything she said, besides which I liked to think she was right. We stopped.
‘Don’t look like you’ve been running,’ I ordered.
‘Oh but I am breathless as a badger,’ she panted.
‘Don’t look it.’ I was breathing a little faster than usual myself but determined to appear fresh and relaxed as I strolled out onto Dogeye Lane, just as Old Scrapie was parking the Wolseley outside the chandler’s shop, cleverly called – wait for it – The Chandler’s Shop.
37
DEATH ON DOGEYE LANE
If Sharkey was miffed at our prompt arrival, he was not going to show it.
‘Took your time.’ He glanced at a crowd of curious onlookers. ‘Go about your business,’ he commanded and they pressed forward.
Near the back stood Jimmy, with his f
lop of brown hair and dark-red lips. The two scrawny girls were eyeing him with intent, I thought, as he gave me an odd little wave.
What are you doing here? I turned away.
Constable Box stood on the threshold of a small terraced flint building,
SKOTTER HEATH JACKSON, CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT
engraved into a brass plate on the wall. He had made a speciality of doing that.
Dogeye Lane was a narrow street and sloped upwards quite sharply. As a child I loved freewheeling on my bike down it, the cobbles nearly shaking the teeth out of my mouth – until the time I crashed into the back of a cart pulled by Pickles, the donkey delivering pickles.
‘Morning, sir, ma’am.’
‘Clear these people away.’
‘Under what authority?’ a tall, corpulent man in a purple-brown Harris tweed suit piped up. I recognised him as Sir Malcolm Butterworth. He was slumming it, mingling with the hoi polloi.
‘Under the authority of a clip round the ear.’ Sharkey raised his hand but dropped it when he realised who he was talking to. ‘Beasty’ Butterworth owned Mawleigh Mansion and a few thousand acres around it and sat on the bench as a justice of the peace.
‘Can I quote you on that, Inspector?’ Gregson of the Gazette emerged in a blue blazer, notebook in one hand, pencil in the other, photographic equipment dangling round his neck.
‘No, you may pigging not.’
‘Pigging.’ Gregson made a squiggle with his pencil.
‘Put that bloody pad away.’ Sharkey stepped towards him.
‘Mind your language,’ a woman in a hairnet complained. ‘I brought my boy to witness a good wholesome murder, not that kind of filth.’ She looked about. ‘Where’s the little skitter gone now?’
Gregson – clearly a man of many talents – fiddled with a light meter while out-elbowing a young man in a leather jacket who was trying to elbow him out of the way.
‘Who you pushing?’ the youth demanded.
‘I rather thought it was you,’ the reporter replied.
‘Clear off, all of you.’ Sharkey tried to wave them away, but the crowd was swelling now with locals anxious not to miss the entertainment.
‘This is exactly the sort of police state we are fighting against,’ Beasty Butterworth remarked, rather oddly for a man of his legal standing, I thought.
We hadn’t done much fighting so far – at least not on land – but his remark was rewarded with an enthusiastic round of applause and a muttering of Nazi pronounced naahsee, as our First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston, was in the habit of saying it.
‘Why you—’ the Shark raised a hand. I do not suppose he would have struck the boy, at least not in public, but he was interrupted again anyway.
‘Hold it.’ The man from the Gazette raised one of his three cameras and pressed the shutter. ‘Gotcha.’
‘What?’ Sharkey’s purple indignation would have made a much better picture, I felt, but the cameraman had turned his attention elsewhere.
‘And you too, please. The public will love to see a policewoman on the front page.’
I am not especially vain – just ordinarily so – but Adam had told me that my left profile was my best, so I turned and had almost managed to put on my best staring-into-the-distance expression before the shutter clicked again. And it was only when the cameraman said, ‘Could we have the skirt raised a fraction?’ that I realised his attention had been on Dodo, leaning seductively against a bollard.
‘No you could not,’ I snapped before she even thought of complying.
‘So how long have you been a lady policeman?’ Gregson of the Gazette asked.
‘I am a woman police officer,’ Dodo told him with great dignity and I left her to explain the difference.
Constable Box saluted smartly but with his left hand. He often confused them. ‘If you look at your thumbs, the right one should be whiter from sucking it,’ Dodo had explained once and, sure enough, hers was, with two little dents where her lower teeth had dug into the back of it. Unfortunately his wasn’t. ‘I suck both thumbs,’ he had explained, ‘in turn.’
‘Morning, ma’am.’ Instead of rotating, Box stepped aside. We had rehearsed that back at the station, and he was perfect on his opening performance. ‘Not a pretty sight.’
This was something we warned the public about, not each other.
‘Oh you can’t help your looks,’ I told him kindly and Box slid further along, back against the bamboo-pattern paper as if the wall would collapse without his support.
Behind me Old Scrapie posed manfully on the step but the attention of the crowd and press was taken by the little skitter walking around Dodo on his hands.
There was a tiny hall with a quarrystone floor going straight to the planked back door. These were fishermen’s houses once and some still were, but many had been converted into little shops or small businesses for they were cheap to buy, very cheap to rent and convenient for the town centre. There was one door to the left pulled to and the rest was wooden stairs, painted in scuffed cream.
‘First floor, ma’am,’ Box told me.
‘Officer, come quickly,’ a well-clipped gentleman’s voice rang out behind me but I ignored it. If anyone was going to be summoned in such a peremptory manner, I would prefer it to be my beloved fellow inspector.
I went up to a landing, the same size as the hall, which was no great size at all, lit only by light from the sole door, hanging off its hinges to my left with Bantony leaning against its doorpost like he was waiting for a date.
38
SNORKELLING IN GOZO
The door was open, the lock breaking through the woodwork and the frame splintered. I put my head inside. The curtains were still closed, billowing inwards in a draught just enough to let flickers of faint daylight in but not enough to see anything except an ominous lump behind the desk to my left.
‘Who found him?’ I stepped into the room.
‘Oy did, ma’am. Mrs Milligan, ’is secretary, called for ’elp when she found ’is office door locked and saw that.’ My constable pointed to a thick rusty-red trickle stagnating over the threshold.
‘And you charged the door down?’
Bantony rubbed his shoulder ruefully. ‘What else could Oy do?’
‘You had two choices,’ I told him. ‘God did not give policemen outsized feet and the East Suffolk Constabulary did not give him outsized boots to be a ballet dancer. A well-aimed kick at the lock would have torn it off its screws.’
‘And the second thing?’ Bantony rotated his arm stiffly.
‘There’s an iron merchant’s just down the road. You could have borrowed a jemmy and jacked it open without breaking into a sweat.’
‘Oy acted on moy initiative.’ Bantony sniffed as if that raised his actions above criticism.
‘Were the curtains closed like this when you arrived?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Bantony said. ‘I opened them for a bit then pulled them again.’
‘So is the window open or closed?’
‘Closed and locked, ma’am.’
‘Did you touch anything?’ I looked at the tiny droplets of sweat on his upper lip.
‘Hardly been in there, ma’am,’ Bantony assured me so defensively you’d have thought it was a very naughty thing indeed for a policeman to enter a crime scene. ‘Well, Oy went in – of course – but Oy didn’t touch anythink.’ Bantony adopted his Oy’m-a-good-boy-Oy-am demeanour.
‘So when we dust the place down we won’t find a single dab to match any of Constable Anthony Bank-Anthony’s fingerprints?’ I clarified.
‘Well, of course I touched a few things. Yow can’t help touchin’ things.’ He was starting to sound like William Brown explaining to his irate mother how a treasured ornament sort of broke itself. ‘But Oy didn’t interfere with anythink.’
I did a breathing exercise Adam had taught me when we went snorkelling in Gozo. ‘What exactly did you touch?’
‘Well, the door handle on the inside, of course,’ Bantony beg
an.
‘Why?’
‘Well, yow do, don’t yow?’ he told me.
‘No I don’t.’
‘It’s for luck,’ he explained. ‘Yow tap a door handle on both sides for luck.’
‘Be damned lucky for the murderer if you’ve obliterated his only print,’ I snapped. ‘What else? What else did you touch, tap or maybe rub to summon a genie?’
Bantony chewed his lips one at a time, clearly confused. This was not in the least what women were for.
‘Oy prolly touched the desk and chair and Oy went to the window and put moy hands on the ledge when Oy looked out.’
‘And did you see anything out there worth mauling the sill for?’
Bantony did a breathing exercise he must have taught himself. It was quick and sharp, the sort of noise you make when you burn yourself ironing – before you make all the other noises. ‘No, ma’am.’
‘Right.’ I stepped over the threshold. ‘Stay where you are.’ I waited a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. ‘One day I shall buy you a pair of gloves.’
‘Oh can Oy have black leather ones?’ Bantony brightened. ‘The girls loike them.’
‘No you can’t.’ I had become very good at snarling lately.
‘She is never very cheerful first thing in the morning,’ Dodo Chivers had whispered to him once. ‘Her dear little mummy told me that.’
I got out my handkerchief and, aware that Bantony was willing me to be careless, used it to flick up the dolly switch and turn the light on.
‘Oh,’ I commented uninformatively. Shit, I breathed in my head.
You see a lot of death in my job but that doesn’t mean you get used to it and it doesn’t mean you have to like it.
39
THE MAN IN A PINSTRIPE SUIT
The ominous lump was, as I knew it would be, a man. He was slumped backwards, wearing a pinstripe suit, in a high-backed chair behind a leather-topped desk. He might have been staring at the ceiling for inspiration if it wasn’t for the two gaping wounds in his throat, just to the right of centre.
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire (A Betty Church Mystery Book 1) Page 14
