A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  ‘I didn’t know,’ repeated the woman in mocking imitation. She had a smear of lipstick, like blood, on her top teeth.

  ‘Nice handbag,’ said the other. Diana shrank from her, clutching the straps tightly. The woman looked down at her shaking hands and said, ‘You haven’t told us where you’re off to.’

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Diana, backing away. ‘A friend …’

  ‘Oh, a friend. Give you that, did he?’ The woman took a quick step towards her and clamped a hand on her arm, gripping it so that Diana could feel the nails through her fur coat. ‘You want to watch yourself,’ she said.

  Diana felt as though she might stop breathing at any moment. The room was beginning to spin. She looked round for the attendant, but the old woman had shuffled away into a corner and was doing something with a pail. ‘Yes …’ she heard herself say. ‘Please, I’m sorry …’

  ‘Bitch!’ Diana felt a warm spray of spittle land on her face before the woman released her, shoving her backwards. She tottered for a moment before regaining her balance, then she grabbed her bag and fled, mocking laughter echoing behind her, back up to the surface.

  She stopped at the stop of the stairs to catch her breath. Everything around her was moving: traffic, neon signs, blurry bright, dancing in front of her eyes, and streams of people moving purposefully forward, rushing past her. Where were they all going?

  She made her way down Piccadilly to Albemarle Street. Everyone seemed to be going in the opposite direction. It was as though she had become invisible – however much she tried to avoid the oncoming crowds, people kept knocking into her, pushing her from side to side so that she struggled to remain upright. Keep going, she told herself. Nearly there … nearly there. And then she was there, standing in front of the Andersons’ front door.

  All the windows were pitch dark. What would she do if they weren’t at home? She hadn’t thought of that. There were waiting rooms in railway stations … perhaps she could go there. Or ask a policeman? She had no idea, and without her address book, which must be amongst the belongings purloined by her landlady, she had no idea of anyone else’s address or telephone number either. Heart thumping in her chest, she lifted the heavy brass knocker and brought it down sharply, twice. They must be there, they must…

  After what seemed like an age she heard footsteps in the hall and Mrs Robinson, looking more monumental than usual and very suspicious, opened the door a couple of inches. Her eyes widened on seeing Diana, and for a moment she did not speak, but stared, taking in her disordered appearance, almost bristling with disapproval. ‘Good evening, Mrs Carleton.’ The words were grudging and Diana’s heart sank. She’d obviously heard about the divorce. People in the film community might be more accepting of – or at least, more used to – people divorcing, but Mrs Robinson, upright and cantilevered in her stiff black frock, was a true Victorian. She hadn’t seemed to like Diana much before, but now …

  For a second, Diana thought the door was going to be slammed in her face, and involuntarily extended an arm to keep it open. ‘Good evening, Mrs Robinson.’

  ‘Mrs Anderson’s not here at present,’ said Mrs Robinson. ‘She didn’t say she was expecting any visitors.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Diana humbly. ‘She wasn’t expecting me.’ She added, as casually as she could, ‘May I come in, do you think?’

  Mrs Robinson looked her up and down once more, then pursed her lips, as if this request merited careful consideration. ‘Well,’ she said, after a long pause, ‘I don’t know when they’ll be back.’

  Abandoning the pretence, Diana said, ‘Please, Mrs Robinson. I need to speak to her.’

  There was no light in the housekeeper’s eyes, no flicker of sympathy, but she stepped back to let Diana into the hall. ‘Shall I take your coat?’

  Suspecting that the fire wasn’t, and wouldn’t be, lit, Diana said, ‘I think I’ll keep it on, thank you.’

  Once in the sitting room, Diana sank into an armchair and inspected her legs. The woman in the toilet had been right – one stocking was laddered, badly. Mrs Robinson, who’d followed her, stood mute and unwelcoming in the middle of the room. Seeing that she was to be offered nothing, Diana said, ‘Do you think I might have some brandy?’

  Expressionless, but still managing to radiate hostility, Mrs Robinson stalked over to the drinks tray and poured a very small amount of brandy, scarcely more than a trickle, into a glass. Handing it to Diana, she left the room quickly, as if to remain might contaminate her in some indefinable way.

  Tired almost beyond thought and profoundly relieved to be alone at last, Diana drained the glass, leant back in her chair and closed her eyes. She imagined James’s hand sliding up her arm, massaging the flesh as he had that day in Green Park. The feeling was so strong that she felt he was there, in the room, leaning over her, his breath warming her cheek. Then, as drowsiness overcame her, James’s face seemed to melt and reform into that of Edward Stratton, eyes smiling and lips moving as though he were trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear him … And then she slept.

  Chapter Forty-One

  ‘A third one?’ said DCI Lamb. ‘Are you sure?’

  His superior’s expression was George Formby at his most gormless and imbecilic, and for a second Stratton was tempted to say, ‘No, I’m just larking about.’ Aloud, he said, ‘I’m afraid so, sir. Name’s Mary Dwyer. Boyfriend reported it this morning. She promised to meet him three days ago but she didn’t turn up and he hasn’t seen her since.’ He slid the photograph – head and shoulders, showing an angular face, handsome rather than beautiful, surrounded by a cloud of dark curls – across Lamb’s desk, where it was given the briefest of glances before being flicked back to him.

  ‘The first one’s been missing quite a few days now, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Ten, sir.’

  ‘And you’ve got nothing at all?’

  ‘We’re still making enquiries, sir.’

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘Nothing to go on yet, sir.’

  Sighing, Lamb let him go with instructions to ‘find out what’s happened to these wretched women as soon as possible’. As if he thought I was going to take Ballard and Harris on a coach outing to the seaside instead, thought Stratton irritably. Lamb was right about one thing, though – ‘Wretched’ was what the three women were, all right – they were amongst the lowest and least successful of their kind. Dwyer and her boyfriend didn’t even have a permanent address.

  The next two days were spent traipsing round interviewing toms, from adolescent, gawkily provocative girls to aged whores, beneath a succession of hand-tinted pictures of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in rooms that smelt of mice. When they weren’t doing that, they were trudging round cheerless pubs with engraved mirrors and curly brass ornaments, showing photographs to staff and drinkers in the hope of jogging someone’s memory. Such places had a regular clientele, but they also functioned as a sort of noman’s-land for a certain type who, impelled by randiness or curiosity, made a foray to pick up a tart, throwing off the shackles of respectability for a brief time before retreating in self-disgust to his daily life.

  At the end of the second day, Stratton dispiritedly bade Ballard and Harris goodnight and went off home, reflecting that the whole thing had been a waste of time, and tomorrow didn’t look as if it was going to be much better. Tomorrow. He’d completely forgotten. Pete was coming home, and Monica had reminded him, several times, that Doris was making a special dinner and he must be sure to be back in time. Much to Stratton’s surprise his son, despite his initial reservations about the army, had decided to stay on when he’d finished his national service. Stratton thought that, although Pete had never said as much, the boy had come to enjoy the uniformity of it all – the drilling, the rules, the ranks. He had avoided thinking too deeply about this, because it smacked too much of Reg. Not, of course, that Reg was a blood relation, whereas he himself, being in the police force … He couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly why it should ma
ke him so uncomfortable, but it did. If only he found it easier to talk to Pete … but, if anything, the gap between them had widened. When something that smacked of introspection or emotion reared its head, they both took refuge in hearty good humour until the danger had passed off.

  He suddenly wondered if Pete went with prostitutes. It would be nice to feel sure that the answer was no, absolutely not, but he didn’t. There were always plenty of girls in garrison towns, and if his pals went along … Anyway, Stratton told himself, angry for speculating, it was a bloody sight better than promising the moon and stars to some innocent young girl when all you wanted was … but for all he knew, Pete had done that, too. It was yet another thing they’d never discussed, and that was his job, not Jenny’s — even if she were here – and he’d failed.

  He supposed that there had been prostitutes in the local towns when he was growing up, but he’d never encountered one until he started working in London. His first sexual experiments had been with the Ellens and Doras of neighbouring villages. There’d been no broken promises, no anguished wranglings, just good fun. Of course, there’d been plenty of gentlemen’s daughters who went hunting and attended county balls, but they’d filled him with awe, not lust, and it wouldn’t have occurred to him to raise his sights so high. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever speaking to one of these lofty creatures. Here, the spectre of Diana, smiling in welcome as she had when they’d met at the Festival of Britain and he’d made a prize idiot of himself, flitted across his mind. Wincing, he pushed it away.

  What he needed was a quiet pint, but he didn’t get it. In the pub, Donald and some of the neighbours were engaged in a discussion about clubbing together to rent a television for the Coronation, and his opinion was immediately solicited as to where the viewing should take place. After suggesting the church hall, he withdrew to a table in the corner and left them to it. He’d be working, but, judging from what he’d seen of television through the windows of showrooms, he didn’t think he’d be missing much: everything on the little screens looked to him as though it were taking place in a snowstorm. He regretted his lack of enthusiasm, but there it was – he wished the new queen the best of luck and all that, but he had other things on his mind: Pete’s visit and the three missing women. If only they could make some progress …

  Some hope, thought Stratton sourly, as he and Ballard sat in the detectives’ office at West End Central the following morning, reviewing their progress – or rather, the lack of it.

  ‘We’ll need to widen the search, sir,’ said Ballard. ‘That’s everything in Conway Street, Warren Street, Grafton Mews—’

  A knock on the door produced Policewoman Harris with two cups of tea. ‘There’s a call, sir,’ she said. ‘Urgent. Cudlipp’s putting it through.’

  Stratton gestured at Ballard to pick up the telephone and went back to studying his list of informants. The obvious ones had proved useless, but perhaps—

  ‘What number?’ Something sharp in Ballard’s tone made him look up. His sergeant’s handsome face had turned rigid, a blank-eyed mask. He took the receiver away from his head and was staring at it as if it were about to disgorge a stream of poison. Stratton stared as, collecting himself with a visible effort, Ballard returned the telephone to his ear and said, ‘Don’t touch anything, sir. We’ll be there right away.’

  Putting the telephone down, Ballard stared at Stratton. The air between them was static with unspoken, and very bad, news. Stratton swallowed. ‘What is it?’

  ‘That was the new tenant of the ground floor flat at number ten, Paradise Street.’ The sergeant’s voice was expressionless. ‘Just moved in this morning. He’s found a woman’s body in the kitchen alcove.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Stratton’s shoes echoed on the dusty boards of the kitchen floor. The small room was empty, but for the range and the deckchair with its sling of knotted rope that he remembered from when they’d visited the Backhouses. Then, in the company of the table and chairs and other domestic paraphernalia, it had looked merely odd; now, on its own in the middle of the room, it was downright sinister. Stratton sniffed. There was a smell of decay – what one might expect, perhaps, from a dead mouse or rat under the floorboards – but, although unpleasant, it wasn’t overwhelming. He could see the gap in the wall where the new ground-floor tenant, Mr Maynard – currently being interviewed by Ballard – had torn the paper away, revealing the ragged tops of rough wooden boards. Stratton remembered that these formed the door of the alcove cupboard where the Backhouses had stored baby Judy’s things.

  Don’t jump ahead, he told himself. It must be coincidence. It has to be. In the ten minutes that had elapsed between the telephone call and their arrival at the house, he’d mentally repeated this over and over again, like a prayer, trying to hold at bay the panic, the dread of what he might find. Feeling as precarious as a man on a high wire with no safety net, he pulled the torch from his jacket pocket and switched it on. As he did so, he noticed, quite objectively, that his hands were trembling. Could this really be happening? Couldn’t the man have made a mistake – seen something that merely looked like a body, a dummy or doll, perhaps, somebody playing an evil practical joke, or—

  There was no mistake. The moment he pushed the torch through the aperture, the beam illuminated a knobbly backbone beneath grey, grimy skin, bisected by the strap of a brassiere. The body appeared to be seated on something and was leaning forward facing the back of the alcove so that the head was almost between the knees, dark hair flopping around it. Something thick and grey – a blanket, Stratton thought – had been looped through the bra strap. Following it with his torch beam, he saw that it was attached to something lumpy and wrapped in another grey blanket, and that this was part of a larger parcel – human-sized, in fact – which appeared to be fastened with a cord, and that behind it was a second one.

  I cannot believe this is happening. Stratton blundered back into the hall and found Ballard talking to Mr Maynard who was sitting, ashen-faced, on the bottom step of the stairs. Leaving the unfortunate man in the care of Policewoman Harris, he led Ballard outside. ‘Get down to the box. We’ll need a photographer as well as the pathologist. I think there’s three of them.’

  ‘Think they’re our girls, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two of them are wrapped up and I can’t see the other one’s face. What did he,’ Stratton jerked his head towards Maynard, ‘have to say for himself?’

  ‘Says he’s only been here once before, sir, and that was yesterday, with the landlord. That’s a Mr …’ Ballard checked his notes, ‘Morrison. Says they looked round together, and he agreed to take the flat, but apart from this morning, he’s not been here on his own at all. In any case, Morrison told him the previous tenant had tried to sub-let the place without his knowledge and he wanted him to know he wouldn’t stand for it.’

  ‘And the previous tenant was …?’

  ‘He didn’t know, sir, so I sent Policewoman Harris next door to find out …’ Ballard faltered.

  Feeling that the world was disintegrating around him, Stratton said, ‘And …’

  ‘Still Mr Backhouse, sir,’ said Ballard, apologetically. ‘The lady told Harris Mrs Backhouse had gone up north a few months ago, to stay with her sister, and she’d not seen him for a few days so she thought he must have left. Said he’d told her he’d given his notice at work because he’d got the offer of a job up there.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. I just hope …’ Stratton didn’t complete the sentence. He could see that Ballard knew only too well what he just hoped, because he was hoping the same. It didn’t need spelling out. Just as well, he thought, because he didn’t think he could bring himself to say it. ‘Go down to the box and talk to Lamb. We’ve got to find the fucker.’

  Ballard opened his mouth, and Stratton saw, from his expression, that he was about to offer a palliative lie, but then he seemed to decide against it and merely nodded. Speech temporarily defeating him, Stratton clapped the sergeant on the bicep. His stomach
seemed to be filled with cold ash, so that he felt hollow and sick. His legs felt unsteady and, if Maynard hadn’t been sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, he’d have sat down on it himself. As it was, he leant against the adjacent wall. Policewoman Harris, who’d been carefully avoiding his eyes since the telephone call came, continued to do so, staring grimly down at the floor.

  The kitchen was crowded with coppers but, beyond the brief acknowledging nod of greeting, nobody looked anyone else in the eye. The unexpressed sympathy, curdled by the beginnings of blame, made the atmosphere even more uncomfortable, but Stratton knew that he mustn’t leave the room. He was meant to be in charge – to desert his post, even for a moment, would be taken for either cowardice or admission. The pathologist, McNally, busied himself with his bag and gloves, and the rest of them watched in thickening silence as PC Canning removed the remains of the wallpaper from round the alcove and then pulled open the wooden door, stopping at each stage of the operation for the photographer to do his work. The man’s bright lights seemed to illuminate the splintered kaleidoscope of hideous pictures inside Stratton’s head: the baby’s tiny, curled feet on the mortuary slab, Muriel’s legs sliding out of the bundle they’d dragged from the washhouse, and worst of all, Davies’s haggard face as he stared into infinity … He put a hand over his eyes to try and block them out, but it was useless.

  ‘Sir?’ Ballard was beside him, a hand on his arm. ‘Can we move the body now?’

  Stratton nodded dumbly then forced himself to watch as Canning and Ballard manhandled the corpse, arms and legs flopping, out of the narrow space and across the passage where, following McNally’s instructions, they laid it on the floor of the now empty back room.

  The face, despite its discolouration and bulging eyeballs, was recognisably that of Mary Dwyer. She looked pathetic – a human object used and then, just as callously, discarded. Her wrists tied together with a handkerchief, and dressed only in a brassiere, stockings and suspenders – the knickers were missing – she was a pitiful sight: jutting hipbones and ribs clearly visible, the skin flashing a hideous greenish-white in the harsh glare of the photographer’s bulb. The only thing that wasn’t greenish-white was the groove of the ligature, the brownish-red of raw liver, that circled her neck.