The Year of the Gun

by Chris Nickson

  There was a little bacon in the larder and she still had one of the eggs McMillan had given her. Potatoes from the garden sitting in a dark box. She’d put up some beans at the end of the summer. For once she could spoil herself.

  She was making her morning cuppa, re-using the leaves from last night, when she heard the sound. Tyres on the gravel along the road. Lottie peeked round the curtain and saw the squad car parked outside her house, a policeman unlatching her gate.

  ‘This can’t be good, Bert,’ she said as she opened the door.

  ‘Sorry, Lottie.’ He managed an apologetic smile. ‘The DCS wants you.’

  She was a passenger for once, watching Leeds in a different way as they headed down Scott Hall Road. Crowds waiting for the buses and trams. Thursday morning.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’re not saying anything official yet, but it’s a body. A girl. That’s all I know. But the Chief Super’s looking after it himself, he’s not handed it off to one of the others, so it must be important.’

  ‘I see.’ A second girl? Bert must have it wrong; that was impossible. McMillan must have come up with something to tie Kate Patterson’s body to the house on Shire Oak Road. Another five minutes and she’d find out.

  ‘I’m sorry if I got you out of bed.’

  ‘Already up and about. Bert Lancaster said there’s another body. That can’t be right, can it?’

  ‘It is.’ She’d never heard him sound so grim. ‘A WAAF. On leave, which is why no one had reported her missing at first. Found just after first light. She was in the woods about a quarter of a mile from Kirkstall Abbey.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘Looks as if she’d been dumped over the wall from the road.’

  ‘But…’ Lottie began, then realised she had nothing to say. Too many thoughts were swirling through her head. ‘Two in two days? The same area?’

  ‘It gets worse.’ He ran a hand over his scalp. ‘She was shot, same MO as Patterson. WAAF, in uniform. Still had her identification card, change and cigarettes in her pockets. Anne Goodman. Twenty-three years old.’ He paused for a heartbeat. ‘No knickers. The pathologist said Kate Patterson didn’t have hers on, either.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘This is turning into a bloody mess.’

  ‘Dear God.’ It was all she could say. After a long silence she asked: ‘Where was she stationed?’

  ‘Linton, near York. She was here on leave, visiting her sister. Andrews is with her now, seeing what he can find out.’

  ‘Had she..?’

  ‘Very likely. The post-mortem will say for sure. I’ve put a rush on it. Meanwhile, we’re going out to Linton-on-Ouse.’

  She had the map with her, for all the help it offered. No signposts to guide them and out in the flat countryside everything looked the same, the sky grey, the fields brown and muddy.

  Two wrong turnings, directions from a grumpy pub landlord, and she finally found the camp. Ten o’clock. Her hands ached from keeping a tight hold of the steering wheel and her eyes felt gritty.

  At least they’d had time to talk on the way. The report on Kate Patterson’s body confirmed that a single gunshot had killed her. She’d had sexual intercourse, almost certainly willingly, and there was alcohol in her bloodstream. No bruising or signs of violence on her body. They’d retrieved the bullet and passed it to the Leeds City Police ballistics man, Detective Sergeant Arthur Lawton. His qualification was that he’d taken a course with Robert Churchill in London.

  The evidence crew had discovered the cartridge but little else. Now Lawton was trying to work out what weapon had fired the shot.

  ‘The lab bods checked the hairs from the knickers from Shire Oak Road under the microscope with Patterson’s,’ McMillan told her. ‘There’s some way they can compare and see if they’re from the same person. But they didn’t match. And they can’t be Goodman’s; she hasn’t been dead long enough.’ He sounded as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. And he was. Leeds rarely had two murders a year. Never two in as many days. And not women.

  ‘If the knickers didn’t belong to Patterson or Goodman…’

  ‘I know. We might have another body somewhere. I’ve given orders for them to go over every inch of ground up and down the river from the abbey.’

  The sentry had an accent that sounded American but his uniform was wrong.

  ‘Royal Canadian Air Force,’ he explained, looking hurt as he returned McMillan’s warrant card. ‘You guys mix us up all the time. We’re the ones who like the king and don’t chew gum.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the superintendent said. ‘We need whoever’s in charge of the WAAFs here.’

  ‘In charge?’ He looked confused. ‘There’s a Warrant Officer, I guess. But they’re all sleeping. They were working until the squadron returned three hours ago.’

  ‘I’m still going to need to talk to her. It’s very important.’ Warrant Officer Jill Castleton prowled around the room, smoking. She’d looked barely awake at first, hair roughly brushed, her uniform mussed.

  ‘I hope you have a very good reason for this,’ she said. There were circles of dark skin under her eyes and she looked stretched with strain.

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’ McMillan introduced himself. ‘It’s about Aircraftwoman Goodman.’ Lottie saw Castleton’s body stiffen.

  ‘What? Has something happened to her?’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s dead.’ There was never an easy way to break it. ‘Someone killed her.’

  ‘But…’ Castleton began and blinked in disbelief. ‘She can’t be. She went on leave to see her sister.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s true,’ McMillan said gently. ‘There’s no mistake.’

  The woman dug into the pocket of her skirt for a handkerchief, swiping blindly at her eyes and blowing her nose. Castleton had to be used to death. She and the other WAAFS were plotters, following the squadron on the radio when they went on raids, advising them, mapping everything on the ops table. How many aircraft hadn’t come back in the last few years? How many men lost? But this was different.

  ‘How?’ It came out as an accusation.

  The superintendent gave Lottie a warning glance before he answered.

  ‘The best we can tell, she must have met someone and he did it.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘Christ.’ It wasn’t a word often heard from a woman. But Castleton lived in a man’s world where there was danger as soon as the engines turned over.

  ‘CHIEF Superintendent, I care about Anne. There are only eight girls here. We sleep in the same place, we see each other every day.’

  Castleton looked as taut as a wire, caught between what she wanted to show and her rank. She understood that for now, duty had to be the winner.

  ‘Of course,’ McMillan said.

  ‘I’m going to let the others sleep on,’ she said. ‘They need it. If the weather holds, the boys will be flying again tonight. I’ll answer everything I can. If you want to talk to them you’ll either have to wait or come back later.’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ he said. It was better than using petrol for a second trip.

  ‘You can find some breakfast in the canteen.’ She gave a weak smile. ‘At least the food’s good. Plenty of it, too. Perk of having the Canadians around. Give me a few minutes to sort myself out and I’ll join you.’

  The mess was easy enough to find; the smell guided them. Bacon and sausages… it was like following a memory. Lottie half expected it to be a mirage: to arrive only to find runny powdered eggs and weak tea. But Castleton was right; there was plenty of food, so much it was as if rationing didn’t exist. Lottie felt guilty as she mounded her plate. Her rumbling stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since the night before. Apparently it wasn’t just the Yanks who made sure their troops were well fed.

  Off in the corner a radio was playing the American Forces Network. Dance bands: Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller. Funny, Lottie thought, she knew all of them;
like everyone else, she’d taken in the music by osmosis.

  They didn’t speak as they ate. Words would have seemed like a travesty. It wasn’t until she’d mopped up the last of the egg yolk with a slice of white toast that she said, ‘You won’t find that in Gert and Daisy’s cook book.’

  ‘I know.’ McMillan had cleaned his plate, but sadness filled his voice. ‘I just wish this wasn’t all because of a dead WAAF.’

  And now her pleasure tasted like cinders.

  Castleton bustled in, stopping for a cup of coffee. She looked more composed, her uniform straight, tie in a smart knot, hair carefully brushed back into a serviceable Victory roll.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I needed a little while. After we’ve talked, I’ll wake the others.’ She bit her lip. ‘They’re going to be horrified. We’re rather close-knit. You get to be that way out here.’

  She had nothing but praise for Anne Goodman. The girl did her job with dedication, a fine record, no bad behaviour. But she enjoyed life too, going into York to dance and meet men. No different from any other aircraftwoman.

  ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’ McMillan asked.

  Castleton pursed her lips. ‘I hadn’t heard of one. She’d been engaged, but her boyfriend died at Dunkirk. I think that’s what made her join up.’

  ‘There are plenty of men right here,’ Lottie said. She’d watched some of the flyboys eating, the loud bonhomie of survival as they talked.

  ‘Yes.’ Castleton smiled. ‘A bit too close to home, though. And the survival rate for aircrew isn’t good.’

  ‘How do the girls get into York?’

  ‘Jeep or lorry if one’s going that way,’ the woman replied breezily. ‘If not, hitchhike. It’s easy enough in uniform.’

  The women were in shock. Airmen dying at the hands of the Jerries, they were used to that; it happened almost every night. But Anne Goodman was one of them, a friend. It had occurred at home, in a city she knew, where she should have been in no danger. Plenty of tears, sentences that stumbled into nothing. One or two of them found their voices and said what they could. But it wasn’t much.

  Anne had had a three-day pass. A lorry was leaving and had taken her to York, where she was going to catch the train to Leeds and see her sister. Completely ordinary. She’d kept herself free of any great romance, just enjoyed short flings. The same as the rest of us, one girl said defiantly.

  The voices could just as easily have belonged to the women who’d served with Kate Patterson. The same loss and bewilderment. And fear; it was there in their eyes even when their voices were steady. Lottie searched Goodman’s locker. A photograph of Clark Gable, cut from a magazine and glued to the door. A faded bundle of letters, the last dated early May 1940. Some clothes – the rest would probably be at her sister’s house. She found an address book and pocketed it.

  She took the road through York. She and Geoff had visited the city often, first on the motorbike, then in the car. Just far enough from home that it seemed like a good run out. Back then the place always seemed scented with chocolate from the Rowntree’s and Terry’s factories. Now it just smelt of exhaust fumes and decay.

  It was almost three when she parked behind Millgarth. McMillan had slept away much of the trip, head resting against the window. Twenty years before he’d still have been alert. But both of them were older now; grabbing sleep when you could was like gold.

  Who had Anne Goodman met in Leeds, Lottie wondered. Where had she gone? DI Andrews had gone to interview the sister. The report would be waiting. Lottie turned in her seat and gently shook McMillan awake. He surfaced slowly, rubbing his face and letting out a long sigh.

  ‘Back to the grindstone. You might as well come up to the office, I’m sure I’ll be needing you soon enough.’ He stifled a yawn then smiled hopefully at her. ‘Maybe a couple of teas from the canteen on the way?’

  He was working through a pile of papers when she nudged the door open. The heating wasn’t working and he sat in his overcoat and gloves, tossing some papers aside, then scanning others. Finally one caught his full attention. He read it, then again, more slowly, before handing it to her.

  ‘Lawton’s checked the bullets. They’re both from the same gun.’

  ‘My God.’ Lottie glanced at the report. The words meant little to her, other than the conclusion, and that they were both .45 calibre. Lawton had added that the standard US army sidearm was a Colt M1911, which used .45 calibre bullets. She looked up sharply at him. ‘You saw the last part?’

  McMillan nodded grimly. ‘That just made solving this a lot more difficult,’ he said.

  How could they even start? They’d need the co-operation of the US Army brass. But surely they’d give that. Two murders… that could turn people against the Yanks.

  ‘Let me make a few telephone calls,’ McMillan said. He gestured at the papers on his desk. ‘Do you think you could put those in order?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  In the office across the corridor she began to sort the correspondence into piles. So many different cases and the Chief Superintendent received copies of everything. But only two investigations really concerned her: the killings of Kate Patterson and Anne Goodman. She read through every word on them, taking her time over the search results from the house on Shire Oak Road. Plenty of fingerprints, from at least twelve different people. Two sets on the bottle, lipstick on the Player’s cigarettes. However, none of the fingerprints matched the dead women. They didn’t match anyone on file. And the knickers hadn’t come from Patterson or Goodman. Maybe the party had been innocent, the girl just passed out drunk; McMillan’s hunch could be wrong.

  None of it was good news. Nothing to help them find a killer. She scrabbled through. The search out at Kirkstall hadn’t found anything. No more bodies. No reports of missing women. Lottie sat back, trying to make sense of it all. But with so little information it was like grasping at smoke. She was still thinking when McMillan returned, a cigarette in his hand.

  ‘The head of the American troops in the area will see us,’ he said and paused for a moment. ‘But not until tomorrow.’

  ‘Why—’ Lottie began.

  ‘He’s involved in operational matters, apparently. I said we had two women who might have been killed by an American serviceman, but his aide didn’t seem to feel that was important enough.’ His face flickered with disgust. ‘Did you find much in the reports?’

  ‘Not that you’d notice.’ She gave him a sad smile. ‘You should go home. There’s nothing more we can do on this until tomorrow.’

  ‘No rest for the wicked. I still have to keep an eye on all the other cases.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You might as well call it a day, though. Early start tomorrow; we’re due there at oh-eight hundred.’

  Lottie gathered up her coat and handbag. ‘Don’t work yourself too hard.’

  It was a night for the pictures. Something to make her forget about the world for a while. Stage Door Canteen was showing at the Kingsway, just ten minutes’ walk from home. Margie next door was at a loose end. They strolled down together, chattering and complaining about the ration, the quality of produce that Ken the greengrocer had in his shop. Anything but work.

  Walking home later, the blackout thick around them, humming Why Don’t You Do Right? from the film and listening for cars as she scuttled across the road, Lottie thought about the squadron from Linton-on-Ouse. They’d be on their way to Germany now. How many would return tonight? Who’d be mourning tomorrow?

  Seven o’clock and Lottie sat in the canteen at Millgarth. Hot, weak tea and a plate of scrambled powdered eggs. It hardly compared to yesterday’s breakfast, and barely seemed worth the effort of eating. Finally she pushed it aside and walked up to McMillan’s office.

  He was freshly shaved, a clean shirt, different tie, but he didn’t look as if he’d slept much. A cigarette was burning in the ashtray. He stubbed it out.

  ‘We might as well go,’ he said. ‘Get there bright and early.’

  Even at this t
ime there was plenty of activity around the old house on Castle Grove. British and American officers, clerks, civilian staff, all moving round with purposeful strides and intent faces.

  Sergeant Andersen was at his desk, looking neat and groomed. He gave them coffee, but he couldn’t let them see General Wheaton before eight.

  ‘He’s a busy man,’ Andersen said apologetically.

  ‘Generals often are,’ McMillan said wryly. ‘All that responsibility. I’m surprised you have a general in this place.’

  Andersen glanced around cautiously before answering.

  ‘He’s a one-star general, sir. That’s equivalent to brigadier in your army.’

  ‘I see.’

  They kept an awkward silence until the general’s aide arrived, staring curiously at Lottie’s uniform.

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but you’re a cop?’ He was so young, and sounded so earnest that she almost laughed.

  ‘She is,’ McMillan interrupted. ‘And she’s my assistant.’ He winked at her.

  Wheaton’s office looked out on the bare winter garden. He was sitting behind a large desk, neat creases along the sleeves of his shirt as if it had come straight from the laundry. He looked young for the rank, probably in his early forties, dark hair in the buzz-cut all the Americans seemed to favour.

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent.’ He stood and held out a large hand to shake. ‘Ma’am. Have a seat. Corporal, coffee here, please.’ He waited until the door closed. ‘I believe you feel we have a problem.’

  ‘The biggest, General.’ He started to explain, stopping when the aide returned with a tray and three cups. Once they were alone again, he continued. ‘Both the bullets are from a Colt M1911. I’m sure you know what that means.’

  ‘Of course.’ He nodded, took a cigarette from the packet on the desk and lit it. ‘What do you have besides that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ McMillan said. ‘But those sidearms are issued to US troops, that’s correct?’