The Stratford Murder

by Mike Hollow

  THE STRATFORD MURDER

  Mike Hollow

  For Jackie: my sister, my friend

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY MIKE HOLLOW

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  She wondered what it would feel like in the instant your body was blown to pieces. Would there be time for you to register the sensation before you ceased to exist? Or would some part of you live on beyond death, able to remember the pain? She brushed the thought from her mind. There were more pressing things to focus on, like not falling down a broken manhole in the blackout.

  She was used to brushing thoughts from her mind. At work they called her a no-nonsense sort of woman. The sort who got on with the job. The sort who coped. Now she was coping with holding down a job in the daytime and being an air-raid warden at night. At first, when the really big raids started at the beginning of September, she’d been twitchy, yes, but even then not panicky like some – men included. As always, she’d just got on with it. Now, six weeks later, if a bomb landed round the corner and took out a house or two she barely flinched. Some people said it wasn’t natural for a woman to cope like that, but she knew that’s what women always did.

  Not all women, of course. There was one she saw every night in one of the public shelters she patrolled, a worn-looking creature about her own age, muttering prayers for her husband, her children, her home, quivering with the fear of losing them. But that was the difference: Sylvia Parks had nothing to lose.

  Next birthday she’d be forty-nine, if she managed to dodge the bombing that long. Past her prime, people would say, if they knew. At forty-eight she’d already been a war widow half her life, a leftover, one of the tens, the hundreds of thousands seen but unnoticed every day on every street, slowly ageing women married to ghosts.

  She paused to pull her scarf tighter against the chill as a train rumbled across the bridge over Carpenters Road and on into the night. Pushing her steel helmet back from her forehead, she mouthed a silent curse at the planes that droned with their irregular engine-beat in the darkness above. For twenty-four years she’d felt numb, adrift, and only now had the nightly risk of death made her feel alive.

  She glanced down at the pavement and stepped over a cat’s cradle of fire hoses. A house to her right – or what was left of it – was still smouldering, but one of the other wardens had told her they’d got the old lady out just in time. Sylvia knew the type. ‘It’ll take more than Hitler to get me out of my bed,’ she’d have said, silly old fool. Well, she was wrong, wasn’t she?

  It had been cold like this on their wedding day, November 1915, with Sylvia shivering in borrowed white lace and Robbie spotless in his Royal Field Artillery uniform, a pair of corporal’s stripes on each sleeve. She was twenty-three, and he a year older. Four days’ leave from shelling the Germans for him, two days as a married woman for her before he had to go back. And by May he was dead.

  She heard the crash of three bombs landing somewhere towards the London and North Eastern Railway works the other side of Stratford station. A target the German aircraft would be pleased to hit, she thought, like so many other places in West Ham. Big bombs too, by the sound of it, but no threat to her here. She’d wait till they came a bit closer before she thought of taking cover.

  This wasn’t her own sector, but she could imagine Carpenters Road, crammed with factories and works, would be another important target. The post warden, her superior in the Air Raid Precautions service, had sent her over from her regular patch to gather information on the situation here. Not long ago he’d described her to a visiting dignitary as fearless, and her conduct as an ARP warden under bombing conditions as exemplary, but the truth was she simply didn’t care. What was the worst that could happen? Yes, a hundred pounds of high-explosive bomb might blast her to anonymous shreds of flesh on the back streets of Stratford, but there’d be no husband, no children, no parents, no siblings to mourn her. No hearts stabbed through by grief at her death, no unfillable void left by her passing. In her oblivion she might even be reunited with Robbie – who could say?

  Up ahead, just before the bridge, she could see flames raging skywards from the site of the old William Ritchie and Sons jute factory. She checked her watch as she approached it: just coming up to three o’clock in the morning, but no chance of a break yet. Her job was to find out the extent of damage from the firemen, as well as details of any casualties and possibly unexploded bombs, and then take her report back to the ARP post.

  She crossed the road, then stopped as something caught her eye. Not another one – would these people never learn? At the back of one of the houses adjoining the jute works site a ground-floor window was shining like a beacon. Of course, even an idiot should be able to see there was no serious risk of light in a kitchen window guiding the German air force to its target when there was a huge blaze like that right next door, but nevertheless she wasn’t allowed to ignore it. She’d have to tell whoever lived there to turn the light off or obscure it with their blackout curtain. That was if there was anyone at home, of course. If there wasn’t, she’d have to find a policeman or a fireman to break in – as an ARP warden, for reasons best known to the people who made the regulations, she wasn’t permitted to do so.

  She strode up to the house and was about to reach for the door knocker when she saw a pair of bell-pushes to her left. So the house must be two flats. She jammed her forefinger onto the lower one and held it there for two or three seconds. Nobody came. She pressed again, for longer this time, then bent down and shouted through the letterbox. Still no answer. She tried the upper bell, but this too went unanswered. She stepped back and looked up to the first floor of the house. All the curtains were open and the rooms behind them in darkness: the whole house had a bleak and lonely air. With a sigh of exasperation she set off briskly up the road towards the blaze. No policemen in sight: she’d have to ask a fireman.

  Fire hoses snaked in all directions across the factory site, each one terminating in a cluster of firemen wrestling to direct what must have been tons of water
into the burning buildings, too focused on their task even to notice Sylvia approaching. She looked around for help and spotted one man sitting alone on a doorstep away from the inferno. He was wearing a fireman’s tunic, and as she approached she could see the Auxiliary Fire Service badge on its breast, and the letters AFS on the front of his steel helmet. He looked exhausted, and when she drew close enough to see his eyes by the light of the fire they were vacant, as if in his mind he was somewhere else, far away.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for some help. Are you injured?’

  Her question made him snap to attention, like a man caught dozing on duty.

  ‘Me?’ he replied, with a sudden brightness and a hint of Welsh in his voice. ‘No, not injured, love, but bless you for asking. I had a bit of a slip off the ladder over there, and it knocked the wind out of me. I’m just sitting here for a moment to recover. How can I help you?’

  ‘I’m Sylvia Parks. I’m an ARP warden.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he replied, glancing at her helmet. ‘Hosea Evans – Auxiliary Fire Service, as you can also no doubt see. So what’s up?’

  ‘I’ve got a house over the road with a light on, and there’s no answer when I ring the bell, so I need you to break in so we can turn it off.’

  ‘Break in? Why me?’

  ‘Because firemen are allowed to, and wardens aren’t. I don’t make the regulations, but I don’t want some bobby nicking me for breaking and entering.’

  ‘They wouldn’t do that, love.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they? We’ve put their noses out of joint enough already when it comes to who does what. They kicked up a right stink when someone said the ARP should be in charge of everything in an air raid, not them.’

  ‘Except fire-fighting.’

  ‘Yes, all right, except fire-fighting. Anyway, the fact remains that I need you to break into that house for me. There may be someone in there who’s hurt or can’t get to the door for some reason. If so, they’re in danger.’

  ‘All right,’ said Evans, hauling himself to his feet. ‘Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom, lead Thou me on.’

  Sylvia recognised the hymn, but wasn’t sure whether his intention was poetic or patronising.

  ‘This way,’ she said. ‘Welsh, are you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I expect you could tell.’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult. Now come along – as quickly as you can.’

  She set off towards the house, with Evans limping along beside her.

  ‘You really could, you know,’ he said.

  ‘Could what?’

  ‘Break in for yourself. They’ve changed the regulations. You’re fully entitled to smash your way into some poor soul’s house now, especially if you think they need rescuing. No need to bring a boy like me along.’

  ‘Well, they haven’t told me. Not that anyone tells us much – we spend so much time enforcing the blackout, they must think we like being kept in the dark.’

  ‘Oh, yes, very good,’ said Evans with a laugh, although Sylvia wasn’t sure whether it was genuine.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said as they arrived. She rang the bell again, but there was no answer. She turned to Evans and jerked her thumb towards an alleyway that ran along the side of the property. ‘Down there,’ she said. ‘Back gate. Off you go.’

  Evans hobbled down the alleyway, followed by the warden. They turned left at the end, into another narrow lane bounded on one side by a brick wall that enclosed the small yards behind the houses. He reached the first gate and rattled it.

  ‘It’s locked,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to break it down?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘We don’t want to create more damage than we have to. That wall looks manageable – over you go.’

  Evans seemed suddenly to regain his agility, and Sylvia was surprised to see him clambering over the wall without difficulty. She followed him, thankful for the protection of her sturdy tweed overcoat and leather gloves, and for the fact that like many of her fellow female wardens she’d taken to wearing slacks since the air raids started.

  At the end of the back yard was an Anderson shelter, sunk into the ground to the requisite depth and covered with soil. She shone her flashlight in at the entrance: it was empty. Crossing to the back door of the house she tried the handle. It was locked.

  ‘Open it, please,’ she said to Evans.

  ‘Righto,’ he replied, and took his fire axe from its pouch on his belt. He pushed the spike end of its head into the gap between the door and the frame, and with a couple of twists the door was open. He swung it wider and held it open with a flourish, inviting Sylvia to enter first.

  She stepped past him without a word and went into the scullery. It was dark, but beneath the door leading to the kitchen she could see the light glowing. She went on, with Evans following her. The kitchen was empty too. She drew the blackout curtains across the window, leaving the light on, and went into the hall. There was an open door on the left, leading into what must have been the front room. This was in darkness too, but as she went in she swept her flashlight quickly round it. The first thing she saw was a dazzling reflection of her own light from a tall mirror – a wardrobe. As the realisation dawned that this was the bedroom, her light picked out a bed.

  She stopped, and let out an involuntary gasp. On the floor beside the bed there was the unmistakeable shape of a body dressed in a jersey and slacks, curled on its side, face to the bare polished floorboards. It was lying unnaturally, one arm twisted behind it. The head was shrouded in a tangle of blonde hair.

  ‘Look,’ she whispered to Evans. ‘It’s a woman.’

  She knelt down beside the body and gave it a gentle shake, but the woman did not stir.

  ‘She must be unconscious,’ said Evans. ‘Passed out, by the look of it.’

  Sylvia gripped the woman by the shoulder and rolled her onto her back, and gasped again.

  ‘Worse than that,’ she said. ‘Look at that thing round her neck. I think she’s been strangled.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a quarter to four in the morning when Detective Inspector John Jago arrived at the scene. He was not in the brightest of moods. When the bomb blasts ceased and a measure of silence fell, he’d tried to settle down in the damp tomb of his Anderson shelter for some belated sleep, only to be roused by the noise of what proved to be a uniformed constable rapping his truncheon vigorously on the shelter’s corrugated iron wall.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ his unexpected visitor had said. ‘You’re wanted in Carpenters Road. A body’s been found in a house next to the old jute works by the railway bridge.’

  ‘What?’ said Jago, struggling out of his uncomfortable bed and sticking his head out of the shelter.

  ‘Foul play suspected,’ the officer added in a theatrically gloomy tone. ‘PC Gracewell’s down there waiting for you, sir, guarding the scene.’

  Jago thanked him as courteously as he could. Not the best start to a Monday morning, but the poor man was only doing his duty. He threw some clothes on and dragged a comb through his hair, then set off in his car to the scene of the crime.

  He found PC Gracewell waiting for him in Carpenters Road, but there was no sign of Cradock.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ said Gracewell. ‘I’m sorry we had to disturb you, but it looks like a suspicious death.’

  ‘Where’s Detective Constable Cradock?’ said Jago. ‘Did you get him out of bed too?’

  ‘I contacted the station, sir – the phone box down the road’s still working. He’s living in the section house, isn’t he? I expect they’ll have told him. They said they’d try to get hold of the pathologist at the hospital and get him down here as soon as possible, but he hasn’t arrived yet. They said they’d get the police surgeon too, but apparently he’s not been very good at answering his phone in the night of late.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – I assume he hasn’t turned up either.’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  ‘Well, let’s get on with
it,’ said Jago. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘It’s a young woman, sir. Looks like she’s been murdered. She was found in that house there by an air-raid warden name of Mrs Sylvia Parks, but she’s had to go off and make a report. I told her you’d want to speak to her, but she hasn’t come back.’

  ‘So what did she have to say before she disappeared?’

  ‘She said there was a light on in the downstairs flat and no answer when she rang at the door, so she got a fireman to break in and they found the woman dead. The fireman’s still here – Evans, he’s called. I told him to stay until you got here. He’s waiting just across the road there.’

  ‘Good work. I’d better get in the house and have a look at the body.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but it’s not there.’

  ‘Not in the house, or not anywhere?’

  ‘Not in the house, sir. I’m afraid it’s been moved from where it was found.’

  ‘Wonderful. That’s just what we need.’

  ‘I’d have made sure nobody touched it or moved it before you came, but unfortunately by the time I got here they’d already done it. It’s just over there on the pavement, by the wall. They covered it with a blanket.’

  Jago was about to give vent to his feelings about members of the public who thought they were being helpful by moving bodies when he spotted Cradock hurrying down the street towards him.

  ‘Good morning, Peter,’ he said when Cradock arrived. ‘Good of you to join us.’

  ‘Very sorry, guv’nor. I had to—’

  ‘Never mind. You’re here now, and we’ve got work to do. Tom Gracewell’s just told me the body’s already been moved, and there’s a fireman that we need to talk to.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I think we can manage without you now,’ said Jago to the uniformed constable. ‘I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than hang around here waiting for the CID to arrive. Thanks for your help – you’ve done everything right.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I think the fireman’s keen to get away – he’s been on duty all night.’

  ‘Very well, we’ll have a quick word with him straight away. That’ll be all.’