Dead of Winter jm-3

by Rennie Airth

Ransom mused a moment longer. ‘Look, from a medical point of view I can’t really help. There’s not enough basis for a comparison. But there is one thing that strikes me: the efficiency with which these two young women were dispatched.’

  The pathologist paused. He cocked an eye at Billy.

  ‘Speaking as a doctor, I can tell you that’s rare. It’s much harder to kill a human being than you might think. I’m not speaking of bombs and bullets now. I mean by the use of one’s hands, whether or not one employs a piece of wire. Much harder. Both physically and psychologically.’

  ‘Unless you have the knack for it,’ Billy said. ‘Is that your point?’

  Ransom shrugged. ‘I don’t want to mislead you. But if it does turn out to be the same man, then you’ll be looking for an exceptionally cold-blooded individual, and in all likelihood one who has done this sort of thing before.’

  He bent to pick up his bag from the floor.

  ‘None of which, I hasten to say, will appear in my report, which will be business as usual. If you get her back to Paddington right away, I can do the post-mortem today.’

  Leaving Billy to oversee things at the flat, Lofty had accompanied Ransom back to St Mary’s. They had both wanted to be certain what they were dealing with — to be sure that Florrie’s death, like Rosa Nowak’s, was a case of murder pure and simple — before moving on to the next step in the investigation, which would have to include the possibility that the two killings were connected.

  ‘The chief inspector’s going to want some answers,’ Billy had told his old pal. ‘Which won’t be easy, seeing as how we’re still scratching our heads over the other business. I’ll talk to Ackers again while you’re gone. And Miss Castro. She’s had long enough to pull herself together.’

  Neither, however, had been able to add anything to the detectives’ sum of knowledge, scant as it was. Mildred Ackers had stuck doggedly to the account she’d already given of the previous evening. Florrie had gone upstairs a little after half-past nine and had not been seen or heard from again. Juanita de Castro had returned soon afterwards with a client who’d departed in due course. Thereafter, as far as Ackers was aware, the house had been quiet.

  At that point, however, there’d been a new development. Joe Grace had called down the stairwell to Billy to come up. He was on the landing with one of the detectives from the forensic squad, a man named Myers.

  ‘Pete says this lock’s been fiddled with,’ Grace told Billy. ‘Here, have a butcher’s.’

  He’d handed him a torch and Billy had got down on his haunches. With the aid of the beam he saw where a probe of some kind had cut grooves into the patina of grime coating the inner workings of the lock.

  ‘Just what I thought,’ Billy said. He was pleased with his stroke of intuition. ‘Now take a look at the street door. I think he crept in here while her ladyship was listening to Billy Cotton at the Starlight Room. I wonder if Juanita heard any footsteps on the stairs.’

  The answer was soon forthcoming. Roused by Joe Grace, who had banged on her locked door repeatedly until the dishevelled woman appeared, she had denied hearing any sound at all after she’d gone to bed. Dark-haired, with a mole on one cheek and a small, crescent-shaped scar on the other, Juanita de Castro had emerged still fumbling with the cord of her robe, offering glimpses of a well-fleshed body beneath it. Her cheeks, smeared with mascara, had shown the tracks of the tears she’d undoubtedly been shedding.

  ‘It’s a bleeding shame,’ she’d said to Billy, with a glare at Grace, who had ogled her nakedness, grinning. She was a nice girl, Flo was. She had a good heart. What are you lot doing to stop this sort of thing, that’s what I’d like to know. Bugger all’s the answer.’

  ‘Here, that’ll do …’ An outraged Grace had shaken his finger at her, but she’d ignored him.

  ‘So why’d it happen?’ she’d demanded of Billy. ‘You tell me that.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he’d replied quietly, looking her straight in the eye, letting her know he was different from other coppers, a trick he’d learned during his time with John Madden all those years ago, the way he’d talked to people, only with Madden it hadn’t been deliberate. It was just the way he was. Different. ‘But I mean to find out and I’m hoping you can help me. Did you hear anything last night? Even the slightest sound … the stairs creaking …?’

  But she hadn’t, she told him. Once her customer had departed she’d gone to sleep and only roused herself at midday to go out for an hour or two. Soon after her return the constable sent by Bow Street had arrived in search of Florrie and she’d been persuaded to let him in to the flat above hers.

  ‘I saw her lying there. Poor Flo. She never did no harm to anyone. All it takes is one rotten bastard …’

  Billy had let her go back into her flat and soon afterwards Lofty had returned from Paddington with a more detailed account of how Florrie had met her end and an assurance from Ransom that she had not been assaulted in any other way.

  ‘Same as the Nowak girl,’ Lofty said. ‘It’s got to be the same bloke.’

  Myers, the forensic man, was just finishing his inspection of the front-door lock.

  ‘You guessed right,’ he said to Billy as he went out. ‘This one’s been fiddled, too.’

  Billy told Cook about the upstairs door.

  ‘Either he followed her down here to Cable Lane, or he was waiting. It would have been easier to do her outside in the alley, but she had a man with her. He had to wait.’

  ‘Some nerve, though,’ Lofty said. ‘Tiptoeing up the stairs.’

  In the darkness of the narrow alleyway all Billy could see of his lanky colleague was a glimpse now and again of his hatchet features as he drew on his cigarette. The air was freezing and their frosty breath mingled with the smoke they expelled. Footsteps approached from the black pit at the end of the street.

  ‘I’ve got him, guv.’ The voice was female, the accent pure Cockney. ‘He was in the Black Cat, trying to sneak out the back. Must have heard we were looking for him.’

  Billy caught a glimpse of a peaked cap. Then the caped figure of a WPC emerged from the darkness.

  ‘Where’s he now?’ Lofty asked.

  ‘In the back of your car.’ She nodded behind her. ‘I left him there with Hoskins. Told him we wanted a word with him down at the station. He’s asking for his brief.’

  ‘Well, he can whistle as far as I’m concerned.’ Cook trod on his cigarette. ‘This is Poole,’ he told Billy, who’d guessed as much — he remembered the name of the officer who’d been first at the scene when Rosa Nowak’s body was discovered. ‘I sent her off to pick up Florrie’s pimp. He’s a Maltese called Ragusa. Lil, this is Inspector Styles. He’s from the Yard.’

  ‘Guv.’ She touched her cap.

  ‘Now let’s all get inside. It’s perishing out here.’

  In the dimly lit hallway WPC Poole was revealed to be a fair-haired young woman, still in her twenties, but with a strong, determined face that made her seem older. Short and stocky, her slightly protruding lower jaw gave her the look of a bulldog, one you’d think twice about crossing, Billy thought. Her glance took him in briefly before her eyes, blue as periwinkles, settled into a neutral gaze.

  ‘Did Ragusa know about Florrie?’ Cook asked her.

  ‘Yes, he’d heard all right. But he’s not saying much.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’ Billy asked. ‘How does he treat his girls?’

  ‘Do you mean, would he top one, like what happened to Florrie?’

  The bluntness of her question took Billy by surprise; he was accustomed to more deference from the lower ranks of the uniformed branch. But he nodded, after a moment.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’

  Poole pursed her lips, weighing the question.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ she said. ‘But they’re his living and you can’t get money from a corpse. Besides, he’s got another way of keeping them in line.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She shr
ugged. ‘You can usually tell one of Tony’s girls. Like as not she’ll have a scar on her cheek, just a nick.’ She touched her own with a fingertip, and Billy recalled the mark he’d seen on Juanita de Castro’s face. ‘That’s what he does to them if they make trouble, or he thinks they’re being lazy. Not enough to ruin their looks, just enough to make them think how bad it could be if he really got to work on them. Dago bastard,’ she added, for good measure, causing Billy to blink once more.

  ‘Is that it, then, Lil?’ Lofty caught Billy’s eye and winked.

  ‘Not quite.’ She turned to him. ‘I’ve just heard about a bloke who may have been looking for Florrie.’

  ‘Oh, yes —?’ Cook’s tone sharpened.

  ‘He was in the Three Stars the other day. Said he was trying to find a red-headed French tart. Didn’t know her name, but thought she had a pitch somewhere up near Tottenham Court Road tube station. He spoke to Ma.’

  ‘The Three Stars is a cafe the toms use,’ Lofty told Billy. ‘In Peter Street. It’s run by an old girl called Ma Hennessy. Did she get his name?’ He put the question to Poole, who shook her head.

  ‘Ma never asked him. She gave me a description, though. Said he was a skinny bloke with small eyes, like a weasel. She didn’t take to him. Reckoned he’d been inside.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘No special reason. But Ma can usually sniff ’em out. He didn’t get anything from her. She told him she didn’t know who he was talking about: didn’t know any red-headed French tarts.’

  Lofty clicked his tongue. ‘Skinny? Doesn’t sound like our man, worst luck. Still, you’d better ask around, Lil. Have a word with some of the other girls. See if they know this bloke.’

  ‘Will do, guv.’ She touched her cap.

  ‘And find out if any of them gave him Florrie’s address,’ Billy added.

  Poole turned her blue gaze on him: though her glance remained neutral, Billy had the impression he was being weighed up.

  ‘Her address? Right, guv.’

  She turned on her heel and went out, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘Good officer you’ve got there,’ he remarked to Lofty. Got her wits about her. She ought to be in plainclothes.’

  Cook grunted. ‘Don’t let Lil hear you say that. She’s put in three times for the CID and been turned down. You know how the Met brass feels about the fair sex. Some of them, anyway. The fewer the better. She’s been warned to stop bellyaching. Told to put a sock in it. She’s not best pleased.’

  ‘Got a mind of her own, has she?’ Billy had guessed as much.

  ‘That and more.’ Lofty chuckled. She’s a right tartar when she’s roused, our Lil. Bloody good copper, though.’

  It was seven by the time Billy got back to the Yard, and as he stepped out of his car he could see in the distance, to the south-east, searchlights probing the night sky, illuminating the barrage balloons that floated like giant moths above the darkened city. They were there to hinder the approach of flying bombs, though few believed they were of any use, any more than the ack-ack guns that blazed away furiously whenever the strange craft with their fiery tails appeared in the skies. (Rumour said they had yet to hit one.) And neither were they any defence at all against the V-2s, which descended without warning like thunderclaps and which Londoners had come to fear more than any other weapon used against them. Only a few weeks before, one had landed on a Woolworths in New Cross Road, killing more than 150 people, housewives mostly, and Billy could only thank his lucky stars his own family was safe and living out of range of this new sky-borne peril.

  He had spent the last hour at Bow Street police station going over the details of Florrie’s murder with Lofty and Grace after the latter had returned from Cable Lane with the news that the forensic squad had completed their examination of the house and had nothing further to report.

  ‘He must have come in and out like a cat,’ Grace had commented. Didn’t leave a mark apart from a few scratches on the locks. And a dead body, of course.’

  He had returned just as Cook and Billy were interviewing Florrie’s pimp, an unrewarding exercise made more difficult by the Maltese’s reluctance to answer any questions except in the presence of his lawyer, whom Lofty had refused to have called.

  ‘Can’t you get it into your head? We’re not accusing you of anything. We just want a word.’

  Dark and dapper, with plastered-down hair and a thin moustache, Ragusa had stayed mum at first. His eyes, moist and motionless as a lizard’s, were fixed in an unblinking stare, and when at last he’d responded it was only to advise them in a heavily accented voice that any attempt to link him with the death of this young lady’ would result in a charge of harassment being laid against the police. These final words had been overheard by Grace as he’d joined them in the interview room, and they brought a swift response from the irascible detective.

  ‘Harassment? Why, you miserable Maltese insect, you don’t know the meaning of the word. Let me tell you something. You can’t breathe in this country now without breaking the law. I could step into that sewer you call a club and find half a dozen violations of the emergency regulations without blinking an eyelid. We can have you up in court from now until Christmas, that’s next Christmas I’m talking about, and in the meantime we’ll arrest every one of your girls any time she sets foot on the street. They can keep you company in the dock. Harassment …? Don’t tempt me.’

  He had leaned closer, his grin unpleasant.

  ‘Now be a good little pimp and answer Mr Cook’s questions. And we’ll have no more lip out of you — is that understood?’

  Shaken by this verbal assault, Ragusa’s tongue had been loosened at last, but to no avail. He had spent the previous evening at his club and had not learned of Florrie’s death until that afternoon. As for the incident in which she’d been involved on the night Rosa Nowak had been murdered, he acknowledged having heard about it — it seemed Ackers had reported the matter to him — but he knew no more than that she’d been questioned by the police.

  ‘Did you speak to Florrie about it?’ Lofty had asked him.

  ‘Only once. I told her she must do what the police say.’

  ‘Did you think of protecting her?’

  ‘From what?’ Ragusa had spread his manicured hands. And then, ‘Did you?’

  His shaft, though it brought a hiss of anger from Joe Grace’s lips, had gone home, at least as far as Billy was concerned, and he acknowledged as much to Sinclair when he knocked on the chief inspector’s door and found him still at his desk.

  ‘It never occurred to me she might be in danger, sir. Maybe it should have.’

  ‘So you also feel it’s the same man?’ Sinclair had listened in silence to Billy’s account of the murder scene. For what it’s worth, John Madden seems to agree with you. I spoke to him earlier. He suggested Florrie might have died because the killer believed she could identify him.’

  Lofty and I had the same thought, sir. And if we don’t connect them then we’ve got two murders with no explanation for either.’

  Sinclair grunted. ‘Let’s not overlook the obvious,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t be the first streetwalker to end up this way.’

  At the back of the chief inspector’s mind, Billy surmised, was a notorious case that had occurred in London before the war when a number of girls managed by a Paris gang had been strangled for refusing to hand over their takings.

  ‘That’s true, sir. But there’s a difference here. Florrie didn’t fit that pattern. For one thing her pimp was a Maltese, for another she was valued property. His best girl, Ragusa told us. He’s a nasty piece of work. Nicks his tarts’ cheeks with a blade if they don’t behave. Florrie didn’t have a mark on her.’

  Sinclair frowned. He was still not satisfied.

  ‘I’d be happier if we had something more solid to go on. A link of some sort. Evidence to show there’s a connection between these two crimes.’

  ‘Well, I can’t give you that, sir.’ Billy shrugged. There’s
no obvious link between them. But there is a common factor.’

  ‘Is there?’ Sinclair’s tone was deceptively mild. ‘I seem to have missed it.’

  ‘It’s something Dr Ransom put his finger on. The way these two girls were topped. Cold-blooded doesn’t begin to describe it. They were disposed of, simple as that. The evidence points to a certain kind of killer being responsible, and the question then is could there be two of them? We don’t think so, Lofty and I. We reckon it’s the same man.’

  Billy sat back. He’d made his case. It was up to the chief inspector now, and as yet he had given no hint as to how he wanted the investigation to proceed. Nor could any clue be deduced from his manner. Sealed by the blackout blinds fixed in the window, his office had taken on the aspect of a cave and the single lamp set low on his desk that of a fire over which he bent like some tribal shaman, his face unreadable in the shadows. After a minute he stirred and looked up.

  ‘Very well. I’ll go along with your judgement. From now on we’ll treat these two cases as one.’

  Billy breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘But there’ll have to be some changes. This will become a Yard inquiry. Cook can stay on the case, but you’ll be in charge. Will that be a problem?’

  ‘Not for us, sir.’ Billy smiled. ‘We’re old pals.’

  ‘Is there anyone else you want?’

  ‘Joe Grace, if he can be spared.’

  The chief inspector signalled his assent with a nod.

  ‘Now, you’re to keep me informed,’ he continued. ‘Every day, if you can. That means all developments, no matter how minor. Speaking of which, just where do you propose to start? It seems to me you’ve precious little to go on.’

  ‘With this fellow who was asking about Florrie a few days ago.’ Billy had his answer ready. He felt more relaxed now that the decision had been made. ‘At least, we think it was her he was after. He’s got to be tracked down.’

  Sinclair nodded.

  ‘And there’s another line of enquiry we want to follow up. Rosa’s murder didn’t give us any leads, but it’s different this time. Whoever killed Florrie jimmied two locks, and according to Myers it was expert work. It’s likely this bloke is a villain, a professional. We’re going to have to go through the records in detail.’