Susan smiled unsympathetically. ‘You need your head examining if you seriously believe that Charles Acland would pass himself off as a male prostitute in order to prey on lonely old men.’
Beale fired the engine, engaged the gears, then looked over his shoulder to reverse out of the parking space. ‘What made you come up with that comment?’
‘Your superintendent mentioned the gay murders . . . wanted to know if Charles had been in London when the last one happened.’
‘He wouldn’t have told you that posing as a male prostitute is the murderer’s MO. We don’t know how he gets in.’
‘I read the newspapers.’
Beale turned on to the main road. ‘The press is guessing . . . we’re all guessing.’ He glanced at her. ‘But let’s say you’re right, why should that exclude Charles?’
‘Because the whole idea of sex alarms him at the moment. He’s an intensely private person who won’t let anyone get too close. Your boss described him as abstemious. I’d describe him as self-protective and fastidious. Do you think that state of mind is conducive to sexual activity?’
‘There’s nothing to indicate that intercourse took place. The murders may have been the reaction to a proposition of gay sex.’
Susan shook her head. ‘Charles would never have got as far as the bedroom,’ she said confidently. ‘He won’t even enter a front door without coaxing. He’s uptight about his facial disfigurement, does everything he can to keep people out of his private space and won’t intrude on anyone else’s. There’s no way he’d get beyond the hall in a stranger’s house –’ she arched an ironic eyebrow – ‘particularly if he thought sex was behind the invitation.’
The inspector glanced at her. ‘So why didn’t you give that opinion to the superintendent? He’d have released Charles three hours ago if you had.’
With a sigh of irritation, she lit another cigarette without asking his permission. ‘No, he wouldn’t. He’d have done what you just did . . . jump at any half-arsed theory that might associate Charles with the attacks. I don’t even know why he came under suspicion in the first place.’
Beale lowered her window a couple of inches to draw the smoke away from him. ‘The man who was attacked today effectively named Charles as his assailant.’
‘How? Your boss told me he was unconscious.’
‘He came round briefly when the paramedics arrived. When they asked him who’d done it, he said it was a man with an eyepatch, and Charles admits that he had a row with Mr Tutting earlier in the day.’
‘He told me about that. He said some old chap kept jabbing him in the back. Was that Mr Tutting?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why have you allowed Charles to go?’
‘His alibi stood up,’ said Beale, drawing to a halt at some traffic lights. ‘We think Mr Tutting confused the two incidents because Charles was back at his flat by the time the attack happened –’ he cast an ironic glance at Susan – ‘having yet another row. This time with his upstairs neighbour.’
She sighed again. ‘He told me about that, too. As I understand it, the woman’s lonely and she took against Charles when he rejected her advances.’ She paused. ‘You must think he’s in fights all the time, but I don’t think that’s true. I agree he’s had a bad twenty-four hours, but the fact that he came to me suggests he’s aware of it and doesn’t want it to happen again.’
‘What makes you think the super wouldn’t have understood that?’
‘Too many negative associations. Fights . . . rows . . . aversion to sex with a woman . . . seeking help from a psychiatrist. In your boss’s shoes, I’d have leapt for the more obvious conclusions. At least this way he seems to have found out for himself that Charles is so opposed to anything to do with the flesh that he’s slowly killing himself from starvation.’
Beale recalled the protruding ribs. ‘Is he doing it deliberately?’
Susan flicked her cigarette out of the car window. ‘I don’t know, but if you want to pray about anything, then pray it’s not Charles’s body that’s found tomorrow morning.’
The traffic lights turned green but Beale ignored them. ‘Are you serious?’
‘It depends how many reserves he has.’
Beale moved off in response to a car’s flashing lights behind him, but drew into the kerb once he was through the junction. ‘I can’t ignore information like that, Dr Campbell,’ he said, turning to her. ‘If your concerns are valid and he’s as vulnerable as you suggest, then I’m duty-bound to organize a search for him.’
‘That’s why we’re going to the Bell,’ she said. ‘He’ll avoid policemen like the plague . . . but I think he might talk to Jackson.’
The inspector shook his head as he reached into his jacket pocket for his mobile. ‘How’s she going to find him? He could have walked a mile in any direction by now.’
Susan laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘I have an idea where he might be,’ she said, ‘but if I’m wrong, it won’t do any harm to delay for half an hour. At least give Jackson a chance.’
‘You’re placing a lot of faith in this woman, Dr Campbell.’
‘Not half as much as I’m placing in Charles,’ she murmured cryptically.
Thirteen
JACKSON PARKED HER CAR at the top of Caroline Street, alongside the rear of Drury Lane Theatre, took a torch from her dashboard pocket and walked down towards the Aldwych. She knew the two pubs on the right-hand side, the Henry Fielding and the Pepys Tavern, but both were attached to the buildings beside them. Not a railing in sight, she thought grimly, convinced she was on a wild-goose chase. Susan’s directions had been hopelessly vague – a bar in Caroline Street with a fenced-off gap at the side – and Jackson seriously doubted that any such gap existed in a part of the city that priced square yards in tens of thousands of pounds.
At one o’clock in the morning, this part of Covent Garden was deserted, although a regular flow of traffic passed along the Aldwych, heading from the Strand towards Fleet Street. The theatre, pubs and handful of restaurants had long since closed and Jackson had the road to herself. Making her way down the pavement, she flicked her torch at every vertical shadow thrown against the buildings by the street lighting, but each property was firmly attached to the one beside it. With a sigh of frustration, she crossed to the other side and walked back up, repeating the exercise. Nothing.
Nor was there anything Jackson would class as a bar, apart from the two pubs. One of the restaurants had its windows obscured by discreet net curtaining, but the name – Bon Appetit – hardly suggested a drinking establishment. She leaned on her car roof and studied an empty unit across the road which was undergoing renovation. There was no gap between it and the building to the right of it, but it stood on the corner of Caroline Street and Russell Street and the weathered fascia board above its whitewashed windows showed some barely discernible letters which looked like ‘Giovanni’s Bar & Grill’.
More in hope than expectation, Jackson made her way into Russell Street and walked along the side elevation of the unit, where more whitewashed panes reflected the beam of her torch. The gap, when she came to it, was just a yard wide and appeared to serve no purpose at all, apart from offering a glimmer of daylight to the few upper-storey windows in the adjoining property. The metal railings, seven feet high, six inches wide and without a crosspiece in the middle to offer a foothold, were merely preventing access to a narrow, twenty-yard-long passageway with a brick wall at the end. There were no doors opening off it and no sign that it was ever used, except as a receptacle for cigarette butts, which lay in filthy piles around the entrance.
Jackson moved to the left and lined up her torch to shine at a diagonal down the alley. The beam wasn’t strong enough to do more than produce a pinpoint of light on the bricks at the end, but she was able to steer it a fair way to the right before it jumped forward to the side wall of the passage. For whatever reason, this wasted space in the heart of London made a ninety-degree turn, and it didn’t take a genius t
o work out that it was heading back towards Giovanni’s redundant kitchen.
Nor did it take a genius to work out why the railings were necessary. During the previous three centuries, when Covent Garden had been a working flower and vegetable market and labour was cheap, the Garden never slept. Fresh produce came in during the hours of darkness to be sold by the stall holders the following day, chop shops and brothels stayed open round the clock, and theatregoers and opera lovers flocked in for afternoon matine´es and evening performances. Intruders down any passageway would have been met and challenged.
Now, with the market gone and the area converted to a daytime tourist attraction, only a fool would leave a recessed back door vulnerable to a burglar’s jemmy at night, and his insurance premiums would be prohibitive if he did. With another sigh of frustration, Jackson studied the bars and wondered how Acland had got over them without a lift. Assuming he was even in there.
She raised her voice. ‘Charles! Are you there? It’s Jackson. Susan sent me. Can I talk to you, please?’ No response. ‘Is anyone there?’ she called next. ‘I’m not the police. I’m just trying to find a friend.’ She pointed her torch towards the right angle, looking for movement, and thought she saw the flash of something white. A face?
‘I’m hoping a friend of mine’s in there,’ she shouted. ‘Will you help me? He’s a young guy with an eyepatch.’
‘Who are you?’ The voice was cracked and gritty from smoke and alcohol.
‘My name’s Jackson. Is he with you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Will you ask him to talk to me?’
‘I’ll ask but it doesn’t mean he’ll say yes.’ There was a long pause. ‘He says he’s not coming out. You’ll have to come in.’
‘Great!’ She ran her torch over the bars, which were held upright by two crosspieces at the top and bottom cemented into the brickwork on either side. ‘How do I get over this without help? Is there a knack to it?’
She heard a snicker of laughter. ‘It helps to be skinny, girl . . . and from the way you’re blocking most of the entrance, that ain’t the case. There’s ties holding the outer bars. If you can get a toe on to any of ’em it makes it easier . . . but you’d better put a coat over the spikes at the top. With your size, you’ll come down on ’em like a ton of bricks if you’re not careful.’
Jackson swore under her breath as she examined the inch-wide rivets that secured the framework into the buildings. Even in bare feet, she’d have trouble securing a toehold and she certainly didn’t fancy the ornamental spearheads that capped the upper crosspiece. Nevertheless she stooped to unlace her boots. ‘Will you do me a favour?’ she called. ‘Come and hold the torch so that I can see what I’m doing?’
‘As long as you don’t blame me when you go arse over tit.’
‘I won’t.’ She reached up to place her boots upside down on the two middle spikes, then shrugged out of her jacket and rolled it into a tight pad to cover the remaining spikes on the left-hand side. A figure approached down the passageway and she played torchlight briefly over a bearded face before handing the gadget through the bars. ‘Cheers.’
The light turned on her. ‘Gawd struth, you’re a big lass. You sure you want to do this?’
‘It depends how drunk you are.’ She reached through the bars again to guide the beam towards the rivets on the left. ‘Let’s see if you can keep your hand steady.’
‘Steady as a rock when I’m drunk,’ the man confided on a gale of alcoholic breath. ‘Only get the shakes when I’m sober. How’s that?’
‘It’ll do.’ She placed her hands on either side of her boots on the top crosspiece, inserted her left toe on the highest rivet she could reach, took a deep breath, hoisted herself off the ground and locked her arms. ‘Where next?’
‘That’s why it helps to be skinny. If you take it easy, there’s room for your arse and your prick between the spikes. You have to squeeze down carefully, mind.’ Another snicker. ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t sting occasionally.’
‘You’re a great help,’ said Jackson sarcastically, transferring her weight to her right hand and using her left to rearrange her jacket over her boots to make an improvised saddle. ‘Here.’ She retrieved her mobile from her trouser pocket. ‘Catch this.’ She tossed it down to him before clamping her right hand over the crosspiece again. ‘If I get skewered on this sodding thing, call an ambulance before I bleed to death. And don’t move the torch!’
‘Bossy, ain’t you?’ he said. ‘Just like my old woman.’ But he’d caught the mobile cleanly and the beam remained focused on the rivets.
‘With a husband like you, I don’t blame her,’ said Jackson, supporting her weight on her hands and working her left foot up the wall. ‘Did she ever get to spend money on the kids, or did you drink it first?’
‘Wasn’t around long enough for nippers.’
Jackson’s toe locked on to another rivet. ‘I’m aiming to straddle this thing, so get ready to move in case I lose my balance.’ With a grunt, she straightened her left leg, swung the other one over the saddle and, in a surprisingly graceful movement, like a female gymnast on the asymmetric bars, reversed her grip and twisted over the spikes. ‘Never even touched it,’ she said with satisfaction as she lowered herself to the ground.
The wino nodded approval. ‘Not bad for a big girl,’ he agreed. ‘You’ve got some muscles on you, that’s for sure . . . assuming you are a girl.’ He ran the torch up and down her body. ‘You’re not one of those guys who want to be women, are you?’
‘No,’ said Jackson without offence. ‘I’ve always had a fanny.’
She reached down her jacket and boots and stepped away from the cigarette butts, wiping detritus off her socks with the back of her hand before relacing the boots. She held her breath while she did it to avoid taking in the man’s aroma. Susan had told her the story of the urinating yobs to explain why she thought Charles might be in Caroline Street, and Jackson concluded that not only was this the vagrant in question but, judging by his powerful smell, he hadn’t washed his clothes since the episode. Either that or he had prostate problems.
She stood up and opened her palm. ‘Mobile?’ she asked pleasantly. He gave it to her but wasn’t so keen to give up the torch. She gestured down the passageway. ‘You lead,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow.’
But he had quaint ideas about escorting women and insisted on walking beside her, shepherding her carefully with one hand behind her back and lighting the ground in front of her with the other. It made for close communion in the narrow confines of the alley and Jackson wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t touching her up. He was a couple of inches shorter than she was, but his shoulders looked powerful and, despite the grey streaks in his beard, she suspected he was younger than he looked.
‘There’s three of us,’ he told her, ‘me, a young lad who’s out cold and your bloke.’
‘What kind of “out cold”? Drugs?’
‘Never seen him with any . . . but I can’t swear to it. He turned up in a right state about half an hour ago, saying he felt sick and his belly hurt. He passed out shortly afterwards.’ They rounded the corner and he directed the beam towards a couple of seated figures in front of a darkened doorway, one leaning against the other. ‘It’s not much,’ he said apologetically, as if Jackson had made a request to join them, ‘but it’s safer than the Strand. You get some real nutters down there.’
‘What name do you go by?’ Jackson asked him.
‘Chalky.’ He played the torchlight over some bags against the wall as if to satisfy himself they were still there, then handed the torch back to Jackson. ‘The lootenant –’ he pronounced it the American way for reasons best known to himself – ‘was planning to go for help till you turned up. He says you’re a doctor.’
‘True.’
‘So will you look at the lad? My guess is he’ll be dead if no one does anything.’
‘Sure. What’s his name?’
‘Ben. I dunno his last name.’
/> She walked forward and flashed the light into Acland’s face. ‘You might have given me a hand over the railings,’ she admonished mildly, kneeling beside the other figure. ‘What good would I have been with a spike up my arse?’ She shone the torch over the grey, unconscious face of his companion.
‘I didn’t think you’d come in if I climbed out.’
‘Why not?’ she asked, rolling the youngster’s lids back with the ball of her thumb and shining the light into his unresponsive eyes.
‘I don’t know what your agenda is. You told me you worked for the police the first time I met you.’
‘Only in a medical capacity. I don’t round up witnesses for them.’ Jackson leaned forward to sniff the unconscious boy’s mouth. ‘How long’s his breath been smelling of nail polish remover?’
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