‘No, there weren’t any of those.’
‘How about a medal?’
‘The last time we discussed medals, you said there was no point in looking for Lennie’s medal, because it didn’t exist,’ George said. ‘Was that just another one of your lies?’
‘I’ve never lied to you,’ I say. ‘I may have avoided telling you the truth, but I’ve never lied to you.’
‘So when you said there wasn’t a medal, you really believed there wasn’t one?’
‘Yes.’
‘But now you do believe there is one?’
‘Yes.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘Well, I’m glad it makes sense to you, because it certainly doesn’t make sense to me, and I am not prepared to either confirm or deny that a medal formed part of the evidence collected,’ George says, stiffly.
But even if he doesn’t realise it, he just has.
‘You must have known it was significant the moment you found it, because it had been so carefully hidden,’ I say.
‘How did you know …?’ George begins, before clamping his mouth tightly shut.
The answer is that, as with so many other aspects of this particular case, I don’t know for sure. But if it hadn’t been well hidden, then surely the killer would have found it.
The question of why it was hidden is much easier to explain – after Lennie told me about the medal, and Mr Jenkins was unusually sharp with him as a result, Lennie would have been living in fear that Mr Jenkins would take his precious medal away from him.
George Hobson has quite given up eating – maybe something I said took his appetite away – and is waiting for me to answer his question.
Well, screw that, I’ve a good few questions of my own that I need an answer to.
‘It wasn’t a real medal at all at all, was it?’ I ask, taking a blind – if calculated – leap into the dark. ‘It wasn’t a Victoria Cross, or a DSM, was it? It wasn’t even a civilian low-level one – like an Amateur Swimmers’ Association proficiency medal.’
‘No comment,’ George says.
‘You’ve looked it up in the text books, haven’t you …?’ I press on, and a slight flick of his eyebrow tells me I’m right about that, ‘but you haven’t found anything that even resembles it.’
‘If you have any more information which is relevant to this case, I suggest you reveal it now,’ George says.
He sounds rattled, but so might any man who’s beginning to suspect that maybe his case against a double murderer isn’t quite as solid as he thought it was when he got up that morning.
‘Well?’ George demands.
‘The only information I have is that Lennie Moon once told me he had a medal, and Mr Jenkins, the head porter at St Luke’s, told me that he didn’t.’
‘And what sense can you make out of that?’
For the first time in this conversation, I might just have the whip hand and I’m not about to squander it.
‘Tell me about the medal,’ I say.
George swallows hard, and for a moment I think he’s about to tell me to go to hell, then he shakes his head – as if he’s appalled at what he’s about to do, but he’s going to do it anyway.
‘It’s made out of some sort of alloy,’ he says. ‘I haven’t had time to have it analysed yet.’
‘Describe it to me,’ I say.
‘There’s a soldier on the front – at least, he seems like a soldier at first glance, but when you look at him more carefully, you notice he’s wearing a peaked cap like the one the porters at St Luke’s wear. The only thing on the back of the medal is two words – “For Bravery”.’
It’s a simple message that even a simple person could understand – and be proud of. I’d been expecting something like that.
‘And the medal’s engraved, rather than moulded?’ I ask.
‘Yes, it is,’ George agrees. ‘So are you going to tell me what it means now?’
‘I’m not sure what it means,’ I say, and when I see he’s getting angry, I hold up my hands to calm him down. ‘I’m really not sure,’ I insist, ‘but I’d guess that the medal was made to reward Lennie for doing something, and also as a way of ensuring that he kept quiet about it.’
‘When you talk about “something”, are you talking about something directly connected with a murder?’ Hobson asks bluntly.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I rather think I am.’
TWENTY-THREE
17 October 1974
I find Mr Jenkins in the porters’ lodge. He is sitting in one of the battered armchairs, and his wife, Lucy, is sitting next to him. They are holding hands, and they look up when I enter, as if they’ve been expecting me.
And maybe they have.
I walk straight over to the display cases on the far wall.
I don’t exactly know why I do that – but if you put the thumbscrews on me, I suspect I’d probably confess that it was a delaying tactic.
I look at the clipper – the Cutty Sark, isn’t it? – and, for a second time, I experience an overwhelming admiration for the craftsman who painstaking constructed it.
Neither of the Jenkins’ has yet said a word, but the sound of their silence fills my ears like a graveyard scream.
I turn around. Mr Jenkins has a stoical expression on his face – the look of a man who knows how the drama about to be played before him will end, but recognises that he must sit through the formalities anyway.
Mrs Jenkins is less stoical, like a woman waiting to be told that there is a great malignancy stealthily growing within her body.
‘How many boats did you make for Lennie?’ I ask Mr Jenkins.
He smiles a sad, weary smile.
‘I lost count,’ he admits. ‘He didn’t just lose them on the river, you know – he’d accidentally sit on them, or drop them in the road in front of an oncoming bus. But I still kept making them for him, because he was worth it.’
‘And, of course, you made the medal for him,’ I say.
Mrs Jenkins squeezes her husband’s hand. ‘Don’t, Harold!’ she pleads with him.
He squeezes back.
‘It’s too late now, love,’ he tells her. ‘It’s far too late.’ He turns back to me. ‘Yes, I made it. I was part of the army of occupation in Germany at the time, but I sent it back to England, and Mr Gough presented it to him in a secret ceremony he probably made up as he went along. Still, Lennie liked it – Lennie was thrilled.’
‘The police have it now, you know,’ I tell him.
‘Was it in his bedsit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must have been well-hidden.’
‘Are you saying that because you looked very hard, but still couldn’t find it?’ I ask him.
Lucy Jenkins squeezes her husband’s hand again, but he merely pats her arm with his free hand.
‘Yes, I’m saying that because I looked and didn’t find it,’ he agrees. ‘Of course, I wasn’t at my best when I was conducting the search. In fact, I was rather upset, because I was very fond of Lennie.’
‘You’d looked after him for over twenty years,’ I say.
‘That’s right,’ he confirms.
‘Would you mind if we rolled things back a little and talked about James Makepeace’s death?’ I ask.
Mr Jenkins shrugs. ‘No, I wouldn’t mind at all’
‘Where were you when he was killed, Mr Jenkins?’ I ask.
‘I was undergoing a mock interrogation at a secret location on the south coast.’
‘And why were you doing that?’
‘So that I would know what to expect if I fell into the hands of the Gestapo.’
‘Why did you need that special kind of training?’
‘Because I belonged to a secret unit – it’s still secret, as a matter of fact – and there was a very good chance I would fall into the hands of the Gestapo.’
‘You weren’t part of the D-Day Invasion of France at all, were
you?’ I ask.
‘Officially, I was,’ he says. ‘If you check through the official records of 3rd Infantry Division, you’ll find that Lance Corporal Harold Jenkins was in the first wave of troops to land on Sword Beach on the sixth of June 1944, and that’s the story I’m supposed to tell anyone who asks.’
‘But it isn’t true?’
‘No, it isn’t. By the time the Allied troops landed, I’d already been in France for over six months.’
‘So when did you learn that Makepeace had been killed?’
‘Not until I was finally allowed to contact Lucy, which was towards the end of June.’
‘And by then, he’d been walled up in the air vent for over nine months.’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘Don’t you ever feel guilty about it?’ I ask.
And this man, who I have known for ten years, does something I have never seen him do before, something – if I’m honest – that I didn’t believe he was even capable of.
He loses his temper.
‘Well, of course I feel guilty!’ he says. ‘There hasn’t been a day since I learned about the killing that I haven’t felt guilty. But it’s only Lennie I’ve ever felt guilty about. I couldn’t give a toss about what happened to that bastard James Makepeace.’
18 October 1943
For days, Harold Jenkins had been telling himself that every single man in the history of the world, who’d ever been called up to fight in a war, must have worried about leaving his wife behind.
It was only a natural reaction, and he was certain that if he’d discussed the matter with all the other soldiers getting ready to be shipped out, they would have confessed to having the same doubts and concerns that he had himself.
But the problem was that – whilst he might tell himself that he was sure that was the case, when it came right down to it – he was not completely sure.
What if he was wrong about it? What if they were as secure about leaving their wives while they went off to fight as they’d have been about leaving them while they went to the corner of the street, to buy a packet of cigarettes? What if they laughed at him, and pointed him out when he passed by them?
‘There goes Harry Jenkins. He’s worried that the moment he leaves, some other sod will be jumping into his bed. Well, he can’t have been giving his wife much of a seeing-to if he thinks that as soon as he’s gone, she’ll be on the lookout for something better.’
And the problem was, he half-believed that himself. Not the bit about what went on in bed – he had no doubts about how good they were together in that particular area – but the part about her wanting something better, which had absolutely nothing at all to do with sex.
He was a college porter, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He liked the job – more than liked it, he regarded it almost as a sacred trust.
But Lucy didn’t come from the service tradition. Her dad worked on the assembly line at the Morris car plant at Cowley.
‘It’s bloody awful repetitive work, and I bloody hate it,’ his future father-in-law had once told Jenkins. ‘Doing the same thing, day-in, day-out, it’s enough to drive you round the bloody twist, but when I get that pay packet on Thursday, when I bounce it up and down in the palm of my hand, and think about all them little extras I can buy for my family, well then, I know it’s all worth it.’
And Lucy, though she maybe didn’t even realise it, had brought some of that same attitude with her to the marriage:
‘Why should we put up with the dowdy furniture the college has given us, when there’s a beautiful three-piece suite in the window of Chetwind and Sparrow’s high class furnishings?’ she’d once asked.
‘Because we’d be spending money we haven’t got,’ he’d argued, ‘and in another few years, the college will change the furniture anyway.’
‘I don’t want to wait,’ she’d said angrily. ‘I don’t see why I should have to wait.’
The war had changed all that, of course. You couldn’t buy tempting consumer goods now, even if you had the money, because there weren’t any.
But the war wouldn’t last forever, and when it ended – when the shop windows once more started filling up with stuff – they’d be faced with the same dilemma all over again.
Maybe Lucy was already thinking about that. Maybe she’d decided her marriage had been a mistake, and had determined to make a much better match the next time.
And the problem was, it must look to her as if there were so many good matches around, especially now that, with the shortage of male servants, she was helping out in the college.
Yes, she was suddenly surrounded by gentlemen who had country estates and could take out their cheque books and buy a dozen three-piece suites from Chetwind and Sparrow’s, if that was what they wanted to do.
Of course, none of the young gentlemen would ever seriously contemplate marrying her. Even if their families would allow it (and that was as likely as a three-legged pig winning the Grand National), the young gentlemen themselves wouldn’t want to spend the rest of their lives saddled with someone who would be a constant social embarrassment to them.
He knew that, because he knew them – had been studying them since Mr Gough had introduced him into the porters’ lodge as a small child. He knew they had been brought up to believe that they could have anything they wanted, and that included pretty young serving girls – could have them, and then, once they were bored with them, could discard them without a second’s thought.
Yes, he knew them – but she didn’t! She might believe their stories about whisking her away to their castles. She might … she might open her legs for them as a down payment on a promise that would never be fulfilled.
And wasn’t it already starting to happen – even while he was still there himself?
Hadn’t he caught her huddled in corners with James Makepeace, giggling like a schoolgirl?
‘Stay away from Makepeace,’ he’d warned her.
‘Why should I?’ she’d countered. ‘He’s a real laugh.’
‘He’s only after one thing.’
‘You may be right, but I haven’t got the one thing he’s after, because he’s a nancy boy.’
And she believed that!
She really didn’t understand what kinds of games these unscrupulous men played! She had absolutely no idea what lies they’d tell a girl to get what they wanted from her!
How was he to protect her from them once he’d gone?
He needed help – a deputy – and he had no idea who he could ask.
His real father had died in the last war, and should he now go to his second father – Mr Gough – and admit that he was not sure that he could control his own woman? No, he could not do that – his pride simply would not let him.
His mother was dead, and he had no brothers. His whole life had been based on two pillars – his marriage and the college – and now the latter couldn’t help him, and the former was the problem.
There had to be somebody who could help him, he told himself – there simply had to be.
When he did finally come up with a name, that name was Lennie Moon’s – which only showed the true measure of his desperation.
19 October 1943
Harold Jenkins’ plan was simple. He would set Lennie to watch Lucy, and if Lennie saw that things were going too far between Lucy and Makepeace, he would tell Jenkins’ cousin, Mildred Drew, about it.
Then Mildred would get in touch with him. He didn’t know how that would work yet – he’d have to be in the training before he could work out the details – but he would find a way because he had to find a way.
If Mildred did get a message to him that something serious was going on between Lucy and Makepeace, he would throw himself on his commanding officer’s mercy, admit that he had done wrong, and say he was more than willing to accept any punishment inflicted on him, but please – please – could he be granted compassionate leave to see his wife before that punishment began.
But
, though the plan was simple in itself, what was far from simple was getting the idea across to Lennie.
‘You want me to watch them?’ Lennie asked, mystified, as he and Jenkins shared a pot of tea in the local café.
‘That’s right, Lennie,’ Jenkins said. ‘I want you to see what they do when they’re alone together.’
‘But if I’m with them, they won’t be alone.’
‘You have to arrange it so that you can see them, but they can’t see you. Can you can manage that?’
‘Maybe,’ said Lennie dubiously. He frowned. ‘But I’m not sure that I want to do it, Mr Harold.’
Jenkins felt a sense of outraged injustice rushing through his entire body. Don’t you realise how much I do for you on a daily basis? he wanted to scream. Don’t you understand that I have to take on extra work because you couldn’t handle it – and that I do it gladly? Yet when I ask you to do this one little thing for me, you say you’re not sure you want to.
That was what he wanted to say, but he didn’t, because he knew that whenever anyone got angry with Lennie, Lennie would retreat into his shell, and might stay there for hours.
So instead, keeping his voice level, calm and friendly, he said, ‘Why don’t you want to do it, Lennie?’
‘Because my mum says you shouldn’t stick your nose into anybody else’s business. She says that nobody likes a nosey parker.’
‘And she’s right, most of the time, but this is different, because I think Mrs Lucy might be having an affair,’ Jenkins said.
Lennie looked back at him blankly. ‘An affair?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
It means sticking his tongue right down her throat, Jenkins thought.
It means bending her over, lifting her skirt over her head, and taking her from behind.
It means …
‘Do you know what men and women do together, when they’re in bed?’ he asked.
Lennie grinned, now that he was back on more solid ground.
‘They go to sleep,’ he said.
‘Don’t they do anything else?’
Lennie frowned again. He thought he had delivered the perfect answer, but he’d clearly been wrong.
‘Do they talk to each other?’ he asked, tentatively. ‘Do they play games like “I Spy”?’
Dry Bones Page 22
