‘Not tonight. I’ve had enough interior decorating for the present. Something else, maybe.’
‘But I thought that’d be what you’d want to do! We haven’t got the place straight yet.’
‘Maybe not, but all the same it’s no treat to do it when you’ve got some unexpected time off,’ she said. ‘Take me to – to the …’ She cast about. ‘The theatre. I’d like that. If we’re going to treat ourselves.’
‘What a woman,’ Gus said, grumbling, but his eyes were bright. ‘Always wrongfoots me. Gissa paper, if you’ve got one.’
‘Last night’s Evening Standard,’ she said, going to the pile of newspapers on a chair behind the door. ‘I’ve kept all these to catch up with. Here we are. Now, let me see …’
She folded the paper to the Entertainments page and pored over it while Gus sat at the desk, his chair tipped back again and his hands behind his head, watching her indulgently. She looked up and caught his eye.
‘You look like a schoolgirl,’ he said. ‘Great big goggle glasses and all that hair falling around. When are you going to grow up?’
‘When you do,’ she said and bent her head to the paper again. ‘You’re like a teenage thug in his dad’s overcoat, you are.’ But she glowed with pleasure all the same. ‘Here we are! How about this, at the National?’ She pushed the paper at him.
He looked and made a face. ‘Hell no, heavy little number, that. Ibsen’s like Marmite for me. Too much spoils the flavour. I want a laugh. Look, how about this one? Lots of culture for you, belly laughs for me. So the critics say, anyway.’
‘If you can laugh that hard at Shakespeare, then that’s something, I have to say. Will we get in at short notice? It’s something of a hit.’
‘Leave that to me,’ he said confidently. ‘I can get anything any time. The Bill always can.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll believe you. So, where do we eat?’
‘My place. Where else? I’ll call Kitty and have her save us a nice bit o’ turbot.’
‘With lobster sauce,’ she said greedily, applying make-up with a slapdash hand. ‘There, will that do?’
‘You could very well pass for forty-three,’ he carolled, ‘in the dark with the light behind you. Come on. I’ll call the nick from the car. You can drive.’
It was a lovely evening, she decided. They had been in time to share a drink in the theatre bar before the curtain went up and the seats he’d managed to get out of the box office were bang in the middle of the dress circle. ‘House seats,’ he’d said with great satisfaction when he came back to her from buying them. ‘This really is a huge hit. They’re doing it all art deco and sprightly twenties music, so I s’pose that’s why. Come on.’
He really is a remarkable man, she told herself as she settled in her seat and relaxed. For all his act as an East End toughie he still had a deep wisdom that emerged just when it was needed as far as she was concerned. He could be as tender and careful a lover as any woman could want. It was true he could also be an overbearing louse at times, but such times were far outnumbered by the good ones. As she let the glow build up inside her she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and settled down to have fun.
At the end they came out into Shaftesbury Avenue still filled with laughter and pleasure. ‘We did The Comedy of Errors at school,’ she said. ‘I played one of the Antipholuses – or should it be Antipholi? Anyway, I was the unmarried one.’
‘Snap,’ he said easily. ‘I was a Dromio. Well, both of them. We did it as a sort of doppelgänger thing, as I recall. You look better.’
‘Mmm?’ She was standing still, looking up at the dark sky in a search for stars. ‘One of these days it’ll be dark enough in a London street actually to see a star. What did you say?’
He grinned and took her elbow. ‘Not a word, ducks. Just a sideways compliment. You used to be able to see stars when I was a kid. On account of we was too poor to have streetlights down our way.’
‘Liar.’ She tucked her hand into his elbow and they started to walk towards the Lexington Street garage where they’d left the car. ‘How do you mean, I look better?’
‘Aha! So you did hear! Trust you! I just meant you looked good right now.’
‘Compared with when?’
‘You were looking – wrong, somehow before. All tired and wound up. The way you do when you get too involved in a case. It’s happened in every one we’ve done together. One or other of us and usually both end up looking like wet dish rags. This time, it ain’t gonna happen. I’ve made up my mind.’
‘So?’ she said. ‘What are you going to do? Not let me be involved?’ She stopped and turned to stare into his face as the other passers-by eddied round them as water passes a rock in midstream. ‘You aren’t going back on your promise, are you? Not when I’ve got free time from the hospital to be in on the case from the ground floor. You wouldn’t do that to me!’
‘It’s all right.’ He turned her so that they could start walking again and took her arm in a firm grasp. ‘I know better than to do that. But I don’t want you worn out the way you were last time.’
‘Last time,’ she said and shivered a little. ‘Let’s not talk about that. It was awful! Let’s talk about the play instead. Twins. Double twins! It’s pushing credulity, of course, but what a joy Shakespeare made of it.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like an English teacher,’ he said. ‘Trying to persuade a bunch of ivory skulls that they can take an interest in literature, capital L.’
‘You’re impossible,’ she said. ‘I try to share some of the stuff I’ve learned to enjoy with you, and what do I get? Scorn!’
‘Oh, I laughed all right. That was a funny production – all that conjuring and leaping about. Like a ballet, almost. And I liked the music. Quite jazzy some of it. But the trouble is I know the story too well. Shakespeare took it from Plautus, you know. The Menaechmi. I read it in the original Latin at school.’
‘What? You bastard!’ she shouted at him and he laughed, letting go of her arm to set off at a trot to run up Great Windmill Street, making her run after him, shouting as she went. No one in the crowded little street paid any attention, of course. Such behaviour was commonplace there.
Altogether a most satisfactory evening she thought much later, sleepily, as he curled up against her and fell into a deep post-coital sleep. A lovely play, a delicious supper and now this. And a great case to get back to tomorrow. I’m a very lucky woman. And then she fell asleep as swiftly as a weary baby.
11
The smell of coffee that filled the big incident room seemed almost as restorative as the coffee itself, George thought, as she watched them trail in one by one, looking weary and with shoulders drooping, only to brighten immediately as they caught the scent and made a direct line for the table in the corner where the two big Cona jugs stood. Gus was always adamant about the quality of the coffee for his team. ‘Dust and water might do for residents here, but my lot need coffee with real meat on its bones,’ he said. He bought top-quality freshly ground Arabica for them out of his own pocket whenever they had a big case for AMIT. This case, he had already told George, looked likely to cost him a fortune in coffee beans. She had to agree with the wisdom of his attitude; she was herself nursing her second cup, because she had arrived with Gus at Ratcliffe Street nick at an unconscionably early hour. He had been head down over his desk for the past forty-five minutes and all she could do was sit and wait, bursting with curiosity and an urge to be up and at work on what, she was now sure, was shaping up to be the most complicated case of her entire career.
Julie Bentley came and sat beside her, her own coffee cup in her hand. ‘Good morning,’ she said a little awkwardly, as though she expected to be snubbed; George was, after all, a very senior person compared to a humble uniformed PC, but she relaxed when George greeted her warmly and made space beside her on the desk on which she was perched.
‘Hi,’ George said. ‘How’s things?’
‘A bit boring,’ Julie sa
id, sipping her coffee. George stared at her.
‘You find this case boring?’ She was amazed. She had thought this girl very bright and worthwhile. Was she going to turn out to be just another airhead after all?
‘Oh, no, not the case,’ Julie said. ‘How could I? The case is amazing. No, it’s what they make me do. Just typing lists and putting things into the computer and so forth. I want to get out more and be where it’s all happening, not here where all we do is twiddle with the information.’
George relaxed, gratified to find her character judgement hadn’t been wanting. ‘I know what you mean. It drives me crazy sometimes. Once I’ve done my PM they want to leave me out of things. Not that I let ’em.’
Julie looked at her sideways and gave a little crack of laughter. ‘We’d noticed,’ she said.
‘Oh, dear.’ George made a face. ‘Do they gossip sometimes?’
‘Not sometimes,’ Julie said. ‘Every time they get the opportunity, more like.’ And laughed again, an infectious sound that made George join in.
‘Oh, well, let ’em,’ she said. ‘What would you rather do than type lists into the computer?’
‘Interview people,’ Julie said promptly. ‘Really investigate. I know the background work matters but it’s so bloody dull.’
‘Why not ask if you can?’
‘I’m not a detective yet. I’ve put in for a transfer and the chance to learn a bit more and get on in the CID, but you know how it is, especially for a woman.’
‘Tell me about it,’ George said feelingly and then straightened as the whole room seemed to rustle to attention. Gus had come out of his office, Roop close beside him. Clearly the day was at last under way. George glanced at the clock, 8 a.m., dead on time. She smiled to herself. Gus would deny it vehemently but he could be as rigid in his systems as any bank manager.
‘Right, you lot,’ he said affably as he stared round. ‘Let’s get down to it. I want a progress report and then we’ll see where we go from here. First off, let’s have the picture on the third body.’
‘First body,’ George murmured, but not so softly that Gus didn’t catch it. He didn’t look at her but went on as though he had fully intended to: ‘Which I have to tell you is in fact the first, since the forensic evidence is that this death occurred well before the other two. Dr B., perhaps you’d like to tell everyone what you found at the PM.’
She looked at him, startled for a moment, and then grinned. Good old Gus. Giving a reason for her presence here, and when she saw Roop’s scowl she knew she was right. He’d have happily settled for a written report one of his people could read aloud. But he wasn’t going to get it, she thought gleefully, and got to her feet.
‘Glad to,’ she said. She reached in her pocket for her own notebook in which she had scribbled some salient points when she’d finished the PM yesterday. ‘The body we found in the shed at Henriques Street was that of a male, aged about seventy to seventy-five, maybe more, dead around three to four weeks – I’m waiting for some test results to confirm that – grey hair and beard …’ She went on in as much detail as she could, describing the difference between the injuries on this body and the ones that looked the same but were slightly different on the other two. ‘The conclusion I reached,’ she ended, ‘was that this murder was a sort of dummy run for the other two – the intention injuries and so forth, you see, and –’
‘Just the report right now, thanks, Dr B.,’ Gus said. ‘We’ll come to the conclusions later, if you don’t mind. And we already have some information about this chap.’
George lifted her head and stared at him, quite distracted from his rebuke by surprise. ‘Already?’
‘Of course,’ Roop growled. ‘The fact that you finished work yesterday at six or so doesn’t mean I did.’
George opened her mouth to protest that it had been Gus who insisted they take the evening off, caught Gus’s glare and subsided. No need to have a row, not if there was news to be heard. ‘Sorry,’ she said meekly, and Gus rewarded her with an approving nod.
‘Right,’ Dudley said with relish. He pulled a file from beneath his arm and sat on the edge of a desk so that he could open it on his knee. ‘It wasn’t difficult, I have to admit. He had a wallet in his pocket and sundry other items which helped with the ID. He is – was a Member of the House of Lords. Jack Scroop. He used to be a TUC swell years ago, and they made him a lord when he retired in 1969. Almost right away he had a row with the Government of the day and instead of taking the whip became a crossbencher.’ He lifted his head again. ‘For those of you who only read the sports pages of your papers, that means he was a Labour peer on account of they were in then, but changed his mind and set himself up as an Independent where he could make a nuisance of himself.’
‘If he retired in 1969 he must have been verra old,’ Mike Urquhart said.
‘You’re right.’ Gus was clearly approving of Mike’s observation. ‘He was. But not as old as you might think. He retired from the TUC when he was fifty.’
‘I should be so lucky,’ someone said sourly. ‘Got a pension did he, as well as a comfy seat wrapped up in ermine?’
‘Possibly,’ Gus said. ‘There was a scandal. It turned out he was gay, had been living with fellas for years. That was more of a thing to fuss about years ago than it would be now, though I dare say the papers do their best to make the worst of it if they can. Anyway, when they found out, the Daily Express made such a row that he had a nervous breakdown, or so it was said, and that was it for the TUC. But from all accounts he’d been a good fella so they put him in the Lords.’
‘And then he went and thumbed his nose at them and wouldn’t do as he was told?’ Mike said. ‘He must have been quite a bloke.’
‘No, he was not,’ Dudley said sourly and primmed his mouth slightly. Clearly he disapproved of homosexual lords. ‘He was a troublemaker from the start. Or used to be. His’ – he sniffed – ‘his partner died a couple of years ago. And since then he’s slipped out of sight a bit. I talked to some people about him last night …’ He turned a page of his notes. ‘Here we are. He used to turn up at the House two or three times a week before Kenny Powys died – he was the other fella – but afterwards, hardly ever. And when he did, he looked a mess. Unwashed, dressed in whatever he’d found handy when he got out of bed, smelly, the lot. A real mess. People had begun to talk, saying something ought to be done about him. But then he stopped coming altogether so they didn’t think about him any more. Till I told ’em last night.’ He bared his teeth in a sudden grin. ‘One or two people are going to be very embarrassed over this. Not noticing one of your fellow Members has gone potty and then disappeared – it doesn’t fill the electors with confidence about the way these people run the country, does it?’
‘D’you mean maybe there’ll be a fuss and we’ll get the House of Lords done away with? Seeing we don’t get to vote for them at all, that’d be –’ Mike began, and this time Gus did not look approving.
‘Serving police officers do not express political opinions, and don’t you forget it,’ he said, and Mike lifted his brows and closed his mouth a little sulkily.
‘We’ve a few more investigations to make,’ Dudley went on, as though no one had spoken. ‘I’ve been in touch with some of his neighbours – he lived in a council flat in Islington, believe it or not – but you have the essence of it. He was a recluse, no one special in his life to notice what he got up to, so when he was killed, no one noticed he’d disappeared. Which was why his body wasn’t found sooner.’ He did not look at George and she, after a swift glance at Gus, bit her tongue. To point out that it had been her insistence they look more carefully in Henriques Street that had revealed the death would be tactless to say the least.
‘Didn’t he do any other work?’ George asked instead. ‘I mean what did he live on? If he wasn’t one of these hereditary people who have a lot of money, and lived in a council flat, I’d imagine he had a cash problem. He wasn’t particularly well nourished, as far as I could tell,
the state he was in’ – beside her, Julie gave a little shudder – ‘and his clothes were certainly far from expensive. Nothing Savile Row about him.’
‘He’d have had his attendance allowance,’ Mike said, once again showing an unexpected grasp of Parliamentary matters. ‘They get a goodish bit just for turning up and going to sleep on the benches, seemingly. Seventy pounds, I’ve been told.’
‘You’ve been told wrong,’ Rupert said crisply. ‘I’ve checked all that. He could claim a day’s subsistence of thirty-three pounds fifty because he lived in London. That covered his travel and his food and so forth. Otherwise all he had was his state pension. Not a lot to live on, but his rent was pretty low. I’ve got the figures here if anyone wants ’em.’
‘As poor as a lord,’ someone at the back of the big room said. ‘It doesn’t sound right, does it? Though if they never do anything, I suppose it’s fair enough.’
‘He did make occasional speeches, apparently,’ Rupert said. ‘Always on the same thing. The reform of the House of Lords. He used to go on about them all being descendants of thieves and robbers and that was how they’d got their titles in the first place, which was a bit rich seeing he’d got his from being a rabble-rouser and causing strikes.’
‘There’s more to trade unionism than that –’ Mike began and then bit his lip again as Gus stared at him.
‘We’re getting off the point,’ Gus said crisply. ‘The thing that matters is that this was a thoroughly eccentric old fella no one cared much about, who did no Committee work, apparently had no power of any sort, so there was no point in killing him. Or there doesn’t seem to be.’
‘Unless he was used by our Ripper for a dummy run,’ George said, knowing she sounded obstinate and not caring. ‘I told you that was how the injuries looked. He sounds to me like the ideal target for someone who wants to try something out.’
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