Dead of Winter

by Rennie Airth

  ‘But not Marko, obviously.’

  ‘No, he escaped. Perhaps he was tipped off. Anyway he disappeared after that – at least as far as the Yugoslavs were concerned – and wasn’t heard of again until he took up with Hendrik Bok. This would have been in the mid-Twenties, at a time when Bok was engaged in a struggle with other gangs for control of the Rotterdam docks. How they got together isn’t known, but soon after Marko was hired, Bok’s enemies began turning up dead, and he let it be known he had a killer working for him who had once been a member of the Black Hand. It was a crude piece of psychology – Bok was obviously bent on creating a climate of fear – but that was when the myth about Marko began. No one ever set eyes on him. He wasn’t part of the gang Bok had about him; he was invisible, appearing only when needed, and almost invariably disposing of his victims by garrotte, which only added to his legend. After all, it’s the true assassin’s weapon, isn’t it? The wire? Silent; bloodless. And it takes a certain kind of man to use it, wouldn’t you say?’

  They had retraced their steps up the yew alley and had come to a long terrace flanked by empty borders with a path running parallel to it. At the far end of the terrace the football game was still in progress, and after a moment’s pause the two men continued their stroll, taking the path in the opposite direction.

  ‘Of course, once Bok had established his position in Rotterdam he had less need for Marko’s services. But by then he must have realized what a valuable asset he’d acquired and in due course he let it be known that his killer was available for hire. It’s hard to be certain just how active he was – legend has a way of inflating reality – but over the next few years Marko seems to have employed his talents quite widely. He was sought for murders in several other countries – Austria and Spain among them – though on scant evidence. There’s no known photograph of him; only descriptions that more or less fit the one we got from Florrie Desmoulins. He was given to altering his appearance, too. His hair was sometimes longer or shorter and he was glimpsed wearing a beard and spectacles. I mention that because a witness at Wapping said the man who went into the pub with Alfie Meeks had a moustache, which is something Florrie didn’t mention.’

  ‘Was there any indication as to his true identity? His real nationality?’

  The chief inspector shook his head. ‘But based on what we know, he could well be British. Assuming he’s our man, he seems to have chosen to sit out the war here. And the fact that we’ve found no trace of him in our own records might even support that premise. For some reason hired killers, political or otherwise, don’t figure much in our way of life. They’re more of a Continental phenomenon. Maybe that’s why Marko took his skills elsewhere. The one person who might have known where he came from was Bok. But if so, he never let on, and for a good reason. It was to his advantage to keep the fairy story about the Black Hand alive. Bok himself was well known to us, incidentally, by name at least, and not only for his role in the opium trade. He had his finger in a lot of pies – prostitution, extortion, the white slave trade – and something else that might prove significant: the disposal of stolen goods. Since Poole’s brainwave I’ve been wondering if that might not be relevant to this investigation.’

  ‘How so, Angus?’ Head down, hands clasped behind his back, Madden kept his naturally longer stride in check, matching it to the other’s shorter steps.

  ‘I told you about Solly Silverman and his chequered past. What I didn’t mention is that we always suspected he had a European outlet for the stones he fenced – it was why we were never able to charge him. If Bok was his contact then that would help to tie up at least one loose end. It would explain how this Marko figure – if he is our killer – got hold of Solly’s name, and why, since Bok could only have given it to him years ago, before the war, he didn’t know he’d retired.’

  Pausing for breath, Sinclair glanced over at his companion. He was still waiting for some reaction from Madden, whose brow remained knotted in a frown.

  ‘That’s the sum of what Duval told me when he was over here, and soon afterwards the war started, since when we’ve been in the dark. There’s been no communication with the Continent: we don’t know what’s been going on over there. But now that Paris has been liberated we can at least get in touch with the French police again, and I’ve sent them a message.’

  Madden’s scowl lifted. He looked at Sinclair in surprise.

  ‘Oh, not by the usual channels. Those aren’t functioning yet. I did try to telephone the Sûreté but I was told that the lines were reserved for government use. I had to scratch my head, but I came up with an idea. I asked our colleagues in the Military Police to help. You may not know it but we’ve had a detachment of them stationed at the Yard throughout the war, and apparently the service has a pouch that goes by air almost daily to their headquarters in Paris. They agreed to deliver my message to the Sûreté. It went yesterday and I marked it for Duval’s attention.’

  ‘What exactly are you asking them?’

  ‘Well, for a start if they’ve any fresh information about Marko. For all we know, he may have been arrested years ago. He may be dead. I don’t want to start a search for him over here then find out it’s been a wild-goose chase. But I gave them an account of the Wapping shooting, pointing out the similarities to Fontainebleau, and also told them about the gems we think might have been the bait that got Silverman down to that pub. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but there was a list of stones in his pocket described in detail as to weight, colour, clarity and cut. Diamonds, according to a contact of mine in Bond Street. He says the gems listed could be worth upwards of £30,000 on today’s market. The piece of paper on which the list was written as well as the figures are of European origin. The Paris police may know something about them.’

  Sensing his companion was about to speak at last, Sinclair fell silent.

  ‘The Fontainebleau murders were in 1937, you said.’ Madden shook his head. ‘That’s too early.’

  ‘Too early for what?’

  ‘For Rosa to have been there. She didn’t arrive in France until the summer of 1939, when her father sent her.’ He saw Sinclair’s look of bafflement. ‘I’m not suggesting she had anything to do with that. I’m just trying to imagine where she might have run into this man. Marko. As far as I know she never went to Holland, so France seems the most likely place. But as I say, the dates don’t fit.’

  The chief inspector grunted. ‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on Wapping for now?’ He was surprised by his old colleague’s train of thought: after what he had just told him he’d expected him to be looking at the questions raised by the case with a different eye. ‘Assuming Marko’s our killer, it offers the best chance of tracking him down. We can deal with the question of Rosa’s murder later, when we catch up with him. After all, other than the fact that these crimes seem to have been committed by the same man, there’s no obvious link between them.’

  He paused, seeing the expression on Madden’s face.

  ‘Or is there?’ he asked.

  Madden shrugged. ‘It depends on what you mean by a link. Don’t forget, all this began with Rosa’s murder. Immediately afterwards this man got in touch with Alfie Meeks. Why? Not simply to locate Florrie Desmoulins, surely. What he really needed him for was to set up the Wapping robbery. Apparently he wanted to lay his hands on a large amount of money in a hurry and was willing to take the risk that entailed. We still don’t know why, but whatever the reason was I’ve a feeling it had something to do with Rosa. It was killing her that got him started.’

  The path along which they’d been wandering had come to an end at a ruined folly with a stone bench beside it. Noticing that the chief inspector’s limp had got worse, Madden suggested they sit down. At the other end of the terrace the football game had come to an end and the young officers, some of them in their uniforms, others in heavy sweaters and scarves, were moving in a straggling line back towards the house.

  ‘Isn’t it strange, though, how all this k
eeps coming back to Alfie Meeks?’ Busy flicking dirt from the seat with his handkerchief, Madden looked up. ‘Ever since you mentioned his name I’ve been wondering how on earth he came to be mixed up in it, and nothing you’ve told me today makes it any easier to understand. Assuming for a moment that Marko’s our man, what’s a criminal of his kind doing associating with the likes of Alfie Meeks? Why choose him as his jackal?’

  ‘Him of all people, you mean?’ The chief inspector sat down.

  ‘Yes, and how did Alfie come to accept the job?’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s easily answered. I told you, he had sixty pounds in his pocket. It wasn’t money he could have earned any other way.’

  ‘Still …’ Madden pursed his lips. ‘It’s hard to believe he would have let himself be used so easily. Not unless he and Marko were already acquainted. I know that’s unlikely, but have you looked into it?’

  ‘In detail, I assure you.’ Sinclair heaved a sigh. All the way back to when Meeks was fifteen and was sent to a borstal for breaking and entering. We’ve checked the names of the people he was banged up with, then and later, but we haven’t found one worth following up, never mind a killer of this kind. He was a petty criminal all his life and the people he associated with were just the sort you might imagine. Nobodies like himself.’

  Madden acknowledged his words with a grunt.

  ‘Well, that’s no surprise, at least. He was only a lad when I knew him, twelve or thirteen, but he was timid even then.’

  Sinclair said nothing. Earlier, in the course of their leisurely stroll, he’d been brought up sharply by a mental lapse, the thought of which still irked him. It had entirely escaped his memory that early in his career his old partner had been stationed at Bethnal Green and had known the Meeks family.

  ‘It was when I was a young copper,’ Madden had reminded him. ‘Still in the uniform branch. The first thing I was told when I got there was to keep an eye out for Jonah Meeks, Alfie’s father. He gave us more trouble than the rest of the borough put together. He had a violent streak – he’d been inside twice on assault charges – and we reckoned it was only a matter of time before he went over the edge and killed someone in a fit of rage. I was there when the firemen recovered his body.’

  ‘I remember it all now.’ Sinclair had shaken his head in chagrin. ‘In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there some question as to how Jonah met his end? A suspicion of foul play?’

  ‘A suspicion, perhaps. But nothing more than that. Jonah had his share of enemies all right, but most of them were too scared to go near him. He was a great hulking brute, strong as an ox, and though he was drunk the night he died it’s doubtful anyone would have had the nerve to tackle him. He’d spent the evening in a pub and then set off home, taking a short cut through the yard of an abandoned soap factory. Next morning his body was spotted floating in a cistern with a severe head injury. Blood was found on a stone at the edge of the tank and it was reckoned he tripped and fell on it, then tumbled into the water unconscious, or semi-conscious, and drowned.’

  ‘I take it he wasn’t robbed?’ Sinclair had found himself silently marvelling at his old friend’s tenacious memory, a quality he had always displayed and one that the chief inspector now had cause to envy.

  ‘No, he had money on him, I remember. His wallet was in his pocket. In fact, the only thing missing was his false teeth. He had an upper set. They must have come out when he went into the water.’

  ‘It sounds like an accident. Why was there any doubt?’

  ‘Only because of Jonah himself.’ Madden had shrugged. ‘When a villain like that meets a violent end there are always questions asked, but there was no real basis for calling it murder. Still, I did wonder once or twice …’

  ‘Wonder … ?’ The chief inspector had been curious.

  ‘Going about later, speaking to people. They’re a close-mouthed lot down there, they don’t care for the police, but I got the impression there were people around who knew more than they were saying. That was one thing; and the other was they didn’t bother to hide their satisfaction: you could almost taste it. No one had a good word for Jonah, and that included his wife, Alfie’s mother; stepmother, rather. She didn’t even pretend to any regret. Meeks was a brute: he’d made her life hell, by all accounts. Alfie’s, too.’

  Considering that they’d gone over the matter in such detail earlier, it surprised Sinclair to find his old partner still nagged by the same questions.

  ‘There must be some way of getting to the bottom of this,’ Madden insisted now. ‘How did their paths cross? Where did Alfie encounter this man? Were they spotted together anywhere before the shooting?’

  ‘Not so far as we know,’ Sinclair replied. ‘Meeks disappeared without explanation from the market in Southwark where he was working ten days ago. We only found out the other day where he’d been living; it was a room he’d rented in Bermondsey. His landlady said he’d been there for three weeks and was already owing her rent. But then all of a sudden he’d paid up. She said he was acting chipper, full of himself. Told her he wouldn’t be staying much longer and implied he was moving on to better things. Obviously he’d met his new employer by then, but why such a nonentity should have been taken on by our man remains a mystery. Even in the short time they were together Alfie managed to make two mistakes that may turn out to be critical in the end. Surely Marko could have found someone more reliable.’

  He was interrupted by the sound of a voice calling out their names: looking up, he saw Helen standing at an open window in the house above. She was waving to them.

  ‘She’s calling us in,’ Madden said. He returned her wave, and they rose from the bench. ‘What mistakes?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, first there was the trail Alfie left from Soho to the White Boar via Solly Silverman’s shop. That enabled us to tie all these killings together.’

  The chief inspector trod gingerly as they set off across the lawn.

  ‘And second was that list of stones. I’d lay odds Meeks was ordered to bring it back with him from Leather Lane and either forgot or was bullied into leaving it with Solly. The irony is, if we do crack this case it’ll be largely due to Alfie’s slip-ups, and that brings us back to the question you’ve just asked. How did this man come to pick him? Now, if we knew the answer to that…’

  It was with a feeling of a day well spent that Sinclair boarded the train for London later that afternoon. Not only had he had an opportunity to discuss the investigation with his former colleague, something he set great store by; he had also learned that Madden would be in town the following week.

  ‘There’s a problem at Aunt Maud’s,’ he’d explained. ‘Her boiler’s giving trouble and Helen’s asked me to go up and deal with the problem. She also wants me to cast an eye on Lucy and find out what she’s up to. I’ll probably have to spend a day or two there, so with any luck we can get together again.’

  As so often, the ideas they’d exchanged had given Sinclair a fresh perspective on the problems before him, and even the familiar sense of regret he had felt as he and Madden had ambled around the gardens together had done no more than remind him of the time, now long past, when they had worked together as one.

  Nor had he been alone in this exercise in nostalgia. Their luncheon host, Lord Stratton, had been equally affected. Greeting the chief inspector warmly, he’d been moved to recall the circumstances of their first encounter, which had taken place two decades earlier during the murder inquiry that had brought both Sinclair and Madden to Highfield. Albeit with a wry smile.

  ‘Do you know, I can recall those days as if they were yesterday,’ he’d remarked on welcoming the chief inspector. #x2018;’s yesterday I have trouble remembering, though my doctor assures me this is nothing to be concerned about.’ He caught Helen’s eye and smiled. ‘A slow erosion of the faculties is a small price to pay for the blessings of old age, she says. Blessings indeed!’

  Though a frail figure now, he had lost none of the grace and old-world c
ourtesy that Sinclair recalled from previous encounters, and if the changes which the war had wrought to his way of life weighed on him at all he showed no sign of it, speaking instead of the satisfaction it had given him to see his family seat transformed into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers and airmen.

  ‘I like to watch them through my window,’ he had declared at one point. ‘Though Lord knows they tear up the lawn with their games. They seem so young to me … so carefree. One has to remember what they’ve been through. What they’ve survived. Somehow it makes my four score years seem trivial by comparison.’

  Listening to the old gentleman, Sinclair had been moved to consider his own mortality and to wonder how and where he might spend his last years. It had always been his intention to retire to his native Scotland, where he still had family. But as the time drew nearer he felt a growing reluctance to make the necessary preparations and now, once again, found uncertainty nagging at him as he contemplated this thorny question.

  As ever, much of the conversation at lunch had concerned the war and the depressing news of the latest German counter-attack in the Ardennes that was threatening to extend the conflict still further; and at a time when many had hoped it might be drawing to an end. The matter was naturally of deep concern to both Maddens, who still had no word of their son, or of the whereabouts of his destroyer, and who dreaded a continuation of the dangerous convoy duty on which he was engaged. But it also weighed heavily on Lord Stratton, who had seen neither his eldest son and heir, an officer serving on Mountbatten’s staff in India, nor his daughter, who was married to a diplomat in Washington, for nearly two years, and was beginning to fear that time was running out for him.