Without the Moon

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Oh dear,” Gladys, the Cardiff-born chief lady of the rollers at the basement salon in Shaftesbury Avenue, sympathised. “We’d best get you a nice cuppa on before we get started, eh?”

  “Thanks, Glad.” Lil wrinkled up her nose as she smiled, like a mischievous child. She kicked off her high-heeled shoes and stretched out on the chair, settling into the lazy, steamy warmth of the place, the sound of Peggy Lee slinking out of the wireless.

  Getting pinched by the local, friendly bogey on the beat was an occupational hazard that cut both ways: he got a few extra shillings in his pay packet for bringing her up to court, she pleaded guilty and got off with a two-quid fine. Justice was seen to be done, at least for the next month or so, and the Crown got its form of tax on Lil’s earnings. Plus, it made sure she never got mentioned to any of PC Plod’s superiors.

  On such occasions, Lil always came down to Glad’s for a trim, set and manicure after they let her go. It was an in-between time, too late to go back home, too early to get back to work. This made a treat out of an inconvenience for her.

  “Wonder where she’s got to?” Lil mused, meaning the Duchess, whom she had arranged to meet here. She glanced around the small, cluttered room and her gaze stopped on the woman sitting to her left. There was something familiar about her, but it took Lil a few moments to work it out.

  “Lorn?” she said, watching one of Gladys’s apprentices, a girl called Dot, who had arms like a docker and a fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth, applying a tube of brunette hair dye to the woman’s previously platinum locks. “Is that you, girl?”

  The woman, with whom earlier in her career Lil had once shared a West End corner, swivelled red-rimmed eyes at her and grunted an affirmative.

  “What you doing to your hair, love?” Lil looked aghast.

  “Here you go, my lovey,” Gladys plonked a cup and ill-matched saucer in Lil’s hand. Lil’s expression didn’t change as she looked down into dark brown depths. Strong, Glad always made her brews strong. Not refined and perfumed like the Duchess poured them.

  Gladys patted her on the shoulder, bent down and whispered: “Don’t bother Lorna right now, lovey. She had a bit of a bloody shock last night, is all. Don’t think she really wants to talk about it …”

  “It’s all right, Glad,” Lorna’s voice was croaky. “I don’t mind telling Lil. Probably should spread the word, case we ain’t seen the last of him.” Her eyes travelled back in Lil’s direction. “I got a right bastard last night,” she said. “RAF, he said he was.” A shudder travelled up her body. “Oh, you tell her, Mol. It hurts to speak.”

  Lorna’s companion, a short, stout brunette with a round face, her hair already set in rollers, had been sitting quietly on a chair in the corner, reading a magazine while Glad’s daughter, Angie, painted her toenails. She looked up, fixed Lil with a steady gaze. “All of it?” she asked. She had a strange, high-pitched voice, like a little girl’s, that was at odds with her matronly appearance.

  Lorna nodded. Molly put her magazine down on her lap.

  “All right,” she said. “We was outside The Monico, you know, on Piccadilly Circus, ’bout half-past ten last night. Business was slack and we was starting to get royally pissed off with these Canadian soldiers hanging about being all mouth and no trousers. Lorn was just saying to me, if they can’t afford the merchandise then move along, this ain’t Madame Tussauds.”

  “I should cocoa,” said Lil, unable to nod now that Gladys was brushing back her hair.

  “Then these other geezers came along, like Lorn said, RAF blokes in uniform. Aha, we thought, that’s more like it. Surely our boys’ll know the score? We start shining our torches and one of ’em, this strapping great tall fella – looks a bit like Douglas Fairbanks Jr, I thought – comes up to Lorn. He had this funny little white slip sticking out of his cap. She asks him what it is, and he says it means he’s training to be an officer. Right plummy voice he had to go with it, and one of them little moustaches. So, we thought ooh, we are going up in the world.

  “He said his name was Gordon and his mate, the one I got talking to, was Felix. Felix had a slip in his hat an’ all, only not such a posh voice, reckon he was more local. And he weren’t like them Canadians, this one got straight down to business. Well,” Molly looked down at her toes as Angie moved onto the next foot, “my room’s closer than Lorn’s, so I said I’d show him the way back after to wait for his friend.

  “But he never showed up. Felix weren’t bothered, he went off to get pissed, and I s’pose it ain’t all that unusual, but I suddenly come over all queer, thought I’d better just go over to Lorn’s, see how she was getting on. Good job I did an’ all. She was in a right state.” Molly looked over at Lorna to make sure it was all right to go on. Lorna gave the flicker of a nod.

  “What happened was, this Gordon couldn’t get it up. Lorn said he was half-cut anyway, stank of booze, so she starts to get worried about what’s gonna happen next, you know, is he gonna take it out on her? First of all, it seems like he’s all right, he laughs it off and gives it another try. This don’t work neither, and now she’s starting to get annoyed with him, wasting her time.

  “She tells him to get off and he does, still sort of bashful like, apologetic. So Lorn takes pity on the geezer, tells him to come and sit with her by the fire. He likes this idea, starts stroking away at her hair, telling her how much he likes it, and she can see he’s coming round again, so she sticks another French letter on him quick as you like, don’t want him making a mess all over her carpet.

  “Soon as she does it, he starts getting rough. Winds all her hair up into his fist and starts pulling her head back, going on and on about how much he loves her hair and how he could tell she was a dirty bitch when he saw her, how he can always tell. He puts his hand around her throat and starts squeezing, really hard.”

  Little Angie, sitting at Molly’s feet, stopped painting and sat up, staring at the storyteller with her huge brown eyes. “My godfathers,” she whispered.

  “What happened then?” straining against Glad’s rollering hands, Lil was on the edge of her seat.

  “Well,” said Molly, flicking her glance around all the women in the room, “thank God, at that moment he manages to get himself off. He drops her like a stone, puts his head in his hands and starts rocking back and forth like a baby. Stays there for a while, moaning to himself, like he’s not even in the same world as she is. Then he snaps out of it, tells her he’s sorry for keeping her and hopes she makes lots of money tonight. Drops a five quid note on her and leaves. Now, what the bleedin’ hell do you make of that?”

  “Sounds like he was going to kill her,” Lil’s voice came out a whisper.

  “Don’t it just,” said Molly. At her feet, Angie crossed herself.

  “So that’s why she’s changing what she looks like? In case he comes back after her?” Lil asked.

  “No,” croaked Lorna, “’cos he said he liked blondes. All that stuff …” she broke off and started coughing, loud, wretched hacks.

  “All that stuff about her hair,” Molly finished the story for her, “was ’cos she was blonde.” She raised her crescent moon-shaped eyebrows. “You better watch out, Lil. Don’t go with no fella in an RAF uniform, if you know what’s good for you.”

  – . –

  “Yes. That’s her.” Carolyn Jones stood in another basement room, a quarter of a mile east of Gladys’s salon, in Gower Street. A room that was large, white and antiseptic. The goosebumps that pricked her skin as Sir Bernard Spilsbury pulled back the white sheet were caused not just by the mortuary conditions, but by the recognition of the woman who had checked into her boarding house only two nights previously. “That’s Miss Evelyn Bourne,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said the pathologist, replacing the shroud.

  Carolyn Jones put a hand up to her mouth.

  “Let me drive you home,” said Greenaway.

  A detective from Marylebone doing house-to-house enquiries had called on Mrs J
ones’s establishment that morning and ascertained that Miss Bourne had rented a room there at 10.30pm on the Sunday night previous. Miss Bourne had come back downstairs twenty minutes after she’d been shown to her room and asked if there was anywhere nearby where she could get a meal. Mrs Jones directed her to the Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch – and that was the last she had ever seen of her.

  They drove back to Gloucester Place in silence, Mrs Jones staring out of the window in a daze. Greenaway didn’t trouble her with any more questions, let her try and get over her shock. He thanked her as he dropped her off and headed straight to the restaurant.

  Outside Lyons was a world of bomb craters, sandbags, barbed wire and windows bound up in tape to stop them from shattering in the event of a blast. More barrage balloons swayed above Hyde Park, restless in the wind.

  Inside, however, the atmosphere resembled that of the ocean-going liner the building had been designed to resemble. A curved, mahogany tea-bar ran the entire length of the ground floor, fringed with ornate stools. Behind it, gigantic copper cauldrons stretched from floor to ceiling, a network of pipes gurgling and steaming between them, brewing a constant supply for the thirsty masses. From one of the three floors above came the sound of a live jazz band, doing their best impression of Benny Goodman’s repertoire.

  A Nippy with a loaded tray swung out from behind the bar as Greenaway approached. He flashed his warrant card at her by way of introduction.

  “You weren’t by any chance working here on Sunday night, were you?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she said without missing a beat. “I was.”

  “Good. Would you mind having a chat after you’ve got rid of that little load?”

  Ten minutes later, he was back in his car. The waitress had remembered Evelyn Bourne all right, said she had come in around midnight, alone. She hadn’t served her herself, but could recall the evening’s menu – the contents of which matched what Spilsbury had found in the dead woman’s stomach – a lot of beetroot.

  As he started the motor, Greenaway thought of Evelyn Bourne’s wristwatch, stopped at one o’clock. She must have taken nearly an hour to walk from the Three Arts to here. The label on the small case she had brought with her did not have an address, but Greenaway was sure his initial feelings about her were right. Even though getting around in the blackout was often arduous, slow progress, she couldn’t have known London very well.

  She didn’t belong here.

  The waitresses at Lyons weren’t called Nippys for nothing; they would have had her fed and out of there within half an hour, forty minutes. She’d got back to Regent’s Park a lot faster than she’d reached Lyons. Had almost made it …

  But the killer had moved fast. Spilsbury’s autopsy revealed that he had crushed the bones in her neck quickly and powerfully, perhaps before she could even have made a sound. Had he followed her out of the restaurant, tracked her until they came to terrain that suited his purpose best – the empty airraid shelter, the deserted street? Then that would imply he knew the area much better than she did.

  Greenaway parked around the corner from the station on Tottenham Court Road. Deep in his thoughts, he didn’t register the Duty Sergeant’s call until he was halfway towards the stairs and the man had left his desk and run up to him.

  “Chief Inspector, sir! DCS Cherrill just called. He wants you immediately – he’s at 153 Wardour Street. He said to tell you it’s the Left-Hand Man again.”

  6

  THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE WEATHER

  Tuesday, 10 February 1942

  Sir Bernard Spilsbury looked every one of his sixty-five years as he stood over the single bed in the corner of the room in Wardour Street. There, beneath his frowning gaze, a woman lay stretched out diagonally; pale, white and naked, with great gashes of red across her neck and abdomen, from where her life had flowed away in a stream across the length of the room.

  Next to her tangled blonde hair lay a safety razor blade and a pair of curling tongs, both encrusted in blood. In the middle of her open legs, a bloodied tin opener had been left, the business end pointing towards the handle of a torch that had been forced inside her, that had once been white but now was crimson.

  So much blood.

  “There was an attempt at manual strangulation before the throat was cut,” the pathologist said, a waver in his voice. “Look at the abrasions on the front of the neck and the signs of haemorrhaging in the eyes and mouth.”

  Cherrill and Greenaway exchanged glances. Another freezing cold room, their breath hanging like ectoplasm on the dank air around them.

  Spilsbury cleared his throat before he pointed to the puncture wounds dotted around the woman’s pubic hair. “These bled a little,” he said. “They were probably inflicted when she was on the verge of death, after the cut to the neck.”

  “Thank heavens for small mercies,” said Cherrill softly.

  Spilsbury gave a nod and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll know more after a full post mortem, of course.”

  “That,” said Greenaway, pointing to the tin-opener, “reminds me of the way he left the gloves on the last one. He thinks it’s all one big joke, don’t he?”

  Neither of the other two men asked him which last one he meant.

  “I think I’ll be able to get some prints,” was all Cherrill said. “I’ve found dabs on her mirror, and of course,” he nodded at the implements arranged around the woman’s body, “there’s those, too.”

  He turned to Greenaway: “There’s a detective next door with the woman who found her. She’s not making much sense yet, but then, how could she? Poor old girl. At the very least, we know who this once was.”

  It was one of those peculiar coincidences that just became more commonplace the longer you worked for the law. This was a woman who had once been called Evelyn, too. Evelyn Bettencourt, alternatively known as Nina Oakley, a part-time actress who had fallen on hard times with the coming of the war and taken to supplementing her income with a few gentleman callers from time to time.

  This much Greenaway was able to get from the detective attending to Ivy Poole, her neighbour. Ivy, a spinster, who as Cherrill had indicated was knocking on a bit herself, worked as an assistant at what they called the fun-fair in Leicester Square, a tawdry assemblage of shooting ranges, slot machines and manky farm animals, where she was obliged to dress as an approximation of Calamity Jane, if the felt Stetson hat and shirt adorned with lampshade fringing that hung on the back of her door were anything to go by.

  Greenaway felt the sadness of wasted years as he surveyed the single bed and one-ring stove of Ivy’s little room, the solitary bowl and plate left in her sink when the meter men had roused her from her slumbers at 8am that morning to take a reading. Luckily it was the men from the Central Electric Company who had gone into her neighbour’s room ahead of her and stopped her from seeing the full horror of what was in there. But Ivy had still seen the blood.

  Now she sat on her bed wrapped in a candlewick dressing gown, clutching a long-cold mug of tea, red eyes staring into the distance. Letting the junior detective take his leave, Greenaway introduced himself and sat down next to her.

  “All right, love?” he said, gently prising the mug from her hands. “D’you want me to make you a fresh one?”

  For the first time in hours, Ivy heard something other than the Frenchwoman’s words about servicemen. It was something about the size of the bogey sat next to her and the gentleness of his sleepy-lidded eyes that calmed her. Ivy’s eyes regained their focus as she slowly took him in, her shoulders slumping, her mouth attempting the flicker of a smile. She shook her head.

  “No, ta, dear,” she said. “Ain’t nothing another one of them’s gonna make seem any better. Not after what he done in there. What he done to poor Nina. The bastard.”

  Greenaway leant down and opened his murder bag a fraction, enough so Ivy couldn’t see inside of it, but so that he could extract the special extra item he always carried there. He poured her out a teacup ful
l of Scotch and handed it to her, watched her pupils enlarge for a second before she took a hefty slug.

  “Ta, ducks.” Ivy wiped a hand across her mouth. “That was just what I did need, Inspector.”

  “So what can you tell me, Ivy,” Greenaway flicked open his notebook, “that’ll help me put a noose around a bastard’s neck?”

  Ivy straightened herself up. “I saw him,” she said. “I saw the man what come in with her last night.”

  “Yeah?” Greenaway encouraged. “Tell me what he looked like, Ivy.”

  “He was a young man,” she said. “Tall and handsome, I suppose – from a distance anyway.”

  “You saw him up close, then?”

  “I did,” said Ivy. “I heard her come in the front door about twenty to twelve. I went and turned the landing light on for her, like I always do. They was coming up the stairs, the pair of them.”

  “Good,” Greenaway nodded. “So you saw them both come in together. You said he was a young man, how old would you say?”

  Ivy pursed her lips. “’Bout twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that,” she said.

  “You remember what colour his hair was?”

  “I do,” said Ivy. “It was a sort of goldie-brown, wavy at the front, but going a bit frizzy at the back, like he ain’t put enough Brylcreem on it.” She squinted as she reached back into memory. “Parted on the left, I think. He had a moustache as well, just a small one.”

  “Nothing gets past you, does it, Ivy?” said Greenaway, taking it all down. “Good girl. You remember what he was wearing?”

  “A uniform, by the looks of it,” Ivy was still staring down her time-tunnel. “Big greatcoat, but not no ordinary one, this one looked like it was tailor-made. Had a belt around the waist. Blue. That’s RAF, ain’t it?”