A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Stratton swallowed, trying to work saliva into his mouth. Aware that everyone was watching for his reaction, he opened his mouth to ask a question, but McNally got there first. ‘The rigor’s passed, but she’s not been there long. Forty-eight hours, perhaps.’ The gentle tone and the expression of sympathy on the man’s face were far harder to take than the usual rebuke for wanting answers before a proper examination had been carried out at the mortuary. ‘You know her?’

  Stratton wondered how McNally had deduced this. ‘Possibly …’ Taking refuge in professional language, he added, ‘There’ll have to be a formal identification, of course.’

  McNally nodded solemnly, a priest taking an unspoken confession. ‘Of course.’

  Stratton followed Dwyer’s sheeted body as it was carried out to the ambulance on a stretcher. He stopped just inside the door. He could hear the crowd that was gathering in the street, but he didn’t want to see them – the eager faces, agog with excitement, reminding each other of the events of two and a half years earlier. ‘Newspapers, too, sir,’ said Ballard, behind him. ‘They’ll be here shortly.’

  McNally, crouched inside the alcove, was running his gloved hands over the blanketed objects. Turning round to come back out he said, with an apologetic grimace, ‘Three’s a crowd … The one at the back’s standing on her head. That’s assuming it’s a woman, of course.’

  Canning goggled at him. ‘You mean she’s upside down?’

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  Canning’s face contorted, and barging past the others he shoved open the back door and almost fell into the garden. They listened in silence as the sound of loud retching followed by liquid splattering told them that he was being violently sick.

  ‘Sorry about that, sir.’ Canning returned looking slightly sheepish and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘Think I’ll be fine now.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Stratton, catching a faint, sour whiff of vomit as the big policeman edged past him. ‘Ready to go again?’

  Canning nodded. With Ballard’s assistance, the second body was carried across the passage and laid on the floor of the back room. McNally, kneeling, began to loosen the knots that held the hideous parcel together. ‘Must have been a Boy Scout,’ he said grimly. Finally, a pair of legs was revealed, then some sort of flannelette garment bunched up between the thighs like a diaper, then the stomach, which was covered in rough-looking white patches, and the torso, small breasts beneath a grubby white cotton vest, one strap secured lopsidedly by a safety pin. Finally, the head emerged, covered entirely by a pillowslip which was secured around the neck by a tightly knotted stocking.

  McNally looked up at Stratton, who nodded assent, and began removing the pillow case. As it was pulled upwards, Stratton saw that there was a piece of flowered material fixed across the mouth, like a gag, some tendrils of brown hair trapped underneath on either side. When that was removed, Stratton could see that the blackened end of the tongue was sticking out from between the teeth.

  ‘Think it’s McKinnon, sir?’ asked Ballard, beside him.

  ‘Could be.’ Stratton didn’t turn to look at the sergeant. What had they done, he thought. What had he done?

  The skin of the face looked dried and the eyeballs were distended, the irises a dull brown. As McNally removed the stocking, Stratton saw the pressure marks on the neck. ‘Is that from keeping the pillowslip in place?’ he asked.

  McNally shook his head. ‘Too deep. Probably strangulation. I imagine that’s why the …’ he gestured at the wadded material between the woman’s legs. ‘Fluids.’

  ‘Can you say how long she’s been dead?’

  Again, no rebuke for the question. The pathologist said thoughtfully, ‘Not sure. She’s in pretty good condition, all things considered – must be the dehydration. Not more than a week, I’d say. Ten days at the outside.’

  ‘There’s not much of a smell.’

  ‘Decomposition hasn’t really got going. The weather’s not been that warm, and although that cupboard wasn’t entirely airtight, with that wallpaper, and being wrapped … that would certainly have helped retard it.’ McNally pointed at the face. ‘Heading for partial mummification, I’d say. There’s mould, though. From spores and such.’ He pointed to the area below the vest. ‘She’s ready to move.’

  The third body appeared, at first sight, to be fully clothed in a dress and cardigan. She was fatter than the others, and there was a towel wrapped around her head, and another between her legs, visible where her skirt and slip had become disarranged. McNally peered down. ‘This one’s not wearing knickers either.’

  Hearing this, Ballard murmured, ‘Muriel Davies wasn’t wearing any knickers, sir, remember?’

  ‘Wasn’t she?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘We can’t jump to conclusions, Ballard.’

  The sergeant stared at him for a moment, eyes widening with irony, then said, ‘No, sir.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ snapped Stratton, ‘we don’t know. But Backhouse is obviously out of control – judging by what we’ve found, it’s only a matter of time before he does it again. I doubt he’s bothered about being caught …’

  ‘I shouldn’t think he’d have left the place like this if he was, sir.’

  ‘Exactly. He’s got beyond that point – doesn’t care any more. Still, if it makes him reckless, he should be easy to catch, which is something. As soon as McNally’s finished here, we’re going to take this fucking place apart. Brick by brick, if necessary. We’ll need some men for the garden, too, so you’d better go back to the box – but not Arliss. I don’t want him anywhere near the place. Then you better take Canning, and … how many men are out at the front?’

  ‘Three, sir.’ Ballard’s neutral expression betrayed no reproach, but Stratton felt both guilty and, perversely, irritated by the man’s sympathetic demeanour.

  ‘I’m sure two can manage, so take one of them and start on that bloody washhouse and the toilet, and if you don’t find anything there you’d better get cracking on the floorboards. Don’t do anything else. We’ll need to get the surveyors’ department in for that – don’t want the place falling down round our ears.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘And, Ballard …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need, sir.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ snapped Stratton, goaded by Ballard’s understanding tone. ‘There’s every bloody need. This is a fucking nightmare, and it’s my fault.’ He turned his back on the sergeant and fixed his eyes once more on the body on the floor.

  ‘Shall we have a look at her now?’ asked McNally. Again the voice was soft, hesitant.

  Stratton nodded, gritting his teeth. For Christ’s sake stop humouring me, he thought. Just get it done.

  Again, the distended eyeballs, congealed and purple skin bleached in the glare and flash of the photographer’s bulb, the black tongue protruding. White mould on the skin around the mouth, and a stub of white stalactite, like a horn, sticking out of one nostril. Was it Iris Manning? He thought so. Unlike the others, he’d known her in life, but in this condition … We could have saved her, he thought. I should have. I should have saved all three of them.

  ‘She may be pregnant,’ said McNally, gently. The words seemed to hover somehow in the air of the dismal room, reverberating so that Stratton heard them not once, but several times over. Dragging his eyes from the ruined face, he saw that the pathologist was feeling the belly with the palms of his gloved hands, as delicately as if she’d been a living woman. ‘There’s something here, quite bulky. Could be something else, but …’

  ‘How far gone, if she is?’

  ‘If she is, I’d say four or five months.’

  Stratton, well aware that it was normally impossible to extract such speculation from McNally or any other pathologist, suddenly wondered if he knew about Jenny. He hadn’t conducted the post-mortem himself, but he would surely know the man w
ho had, and perhaps. . . McNally’s expression wasn’t telling him one way or the other. The pathologist was staring at him with intense concentration, as if willing him to focus on the job. Grasping for some sort of logic, he said, ‘Do you think either of the others might have been pregnant?’

  ‘Won’t be able to tell that until we get back to the mortuary.’ Until they were cut up, Stratton thought. ‘Won’t know if this one’s been interfered with yet, either. The pregnancy, I mean – if that’s what it is.’

  ‘Muriel Davies’s pregnancy wasn’t interfered with.’

  ‘No,’ McNally looked away. ‘It wasn’t.’

  No-one had said anything about Iris Manning being pregnant. Perhaps she hadn’t told anyone. Perhaps Backhouse had offered to get rid of it for her, enticed her in …

  A thump from outside made him turn his head in the direction of the back yard, and he saw that Ballard and the others were trooping back inside and down the passage to the front room. Nothing in the washhouse then, this time, but there was always the garden …

  McNally was saying something. ‘. . . move her now?’

  ‘Yes. You can take her away.’

  As they stood back for the sheeted corpse to be removed, McNally said, ‘Do I take it that you’d like me to stay?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Pulling up the boards shouldn’t take long. Would you excuse me for a moment?’

  Averting his eyes from the drying puddle of spew where Canning had voided the contents of his stomach, Stratton stared around the small back yard. It seemed even more untidy than it had been in 1950 – but then, he thought, they’d only seen it by torchlight. The wrecked Anderson shelter was still there and the twisted chicken wire, the old tin cans, crumpled newspapers, broken bricks and odd tufts of grass sticking out of the dry mud, as well as a surprisingly vigorous mock orange and another bush that he didn’t recognise. Seeing a small bone, gnawed white, that looked like the remains of a chop, Stratton wondered where the dog was. Had Backhouse taken it with him?

  Unless it wasn’t an animal bone, of course … Some human bones were small and a dog, knowing no different, would enjoy chewing one of those as well. Human remains could fertilise plants. They did in graveyards. Was he looking at a graveyard now? And if he was, had there been women buried here when they found Muriel and Judy Davies? For Christ’s sake, he told himself, you were only looking for Muriel and Judy, not a lot of dead tarts. There was no reason then – none whatsoever – to think that anyone else had been killed. And certainly no reason to think that Norman Backhouse, with his fibrositis and his diarrhoea, his visits to the doctor and his old-womanish ways … No reason to think that Backhouse the former police Reservist, the reformed man … No reason to think that Backhouse, who had a nice quiet wife and a nice quiet life – except that he shared his nice quiet home with Christ-knows-how-many dead whores …

  If Davies was innocent, why had he confessed? Because he felt guilty about what had happened to his wife? Guilty that he hadn’t protected her?

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ He smashed his fist against the wooden panels of the washhouse door. He, of all people, should have understood about the guilt. But it was Jenny’s death, Jenny and their unborn child, that had made him pursue Davies with such certainty; resentment against a man who, it appeared, had had a pregnant wife and killed her, and who’d killed a baby, when he’d have given anything, anything at all—

  ‘Yes.’ That’s what Davies had said when he’d shown him the clothing at West End Central. He’d reached forward and picked up the tie that was used to kill his child, and he’d said ‘yes’. Then he’d wept. And Stratton had been absolutely sure that he’d got his man. ‘Yes.’ One word: it could mean everything or nothing.

  And the stupid bastard had lied about practically everything else, hadn’t he? No-one, not even his mother, had believed a word he said …

  ‘Sir?’ Ballard stuck his head round the back door.

  ‘Found anything?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. Canning and Tillotson are getting started on the floorboards in the back room.’

  ‘That was their bedroom, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir … And there are a couple of things you ought to see.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A length of rubber tubing, and a bulldog clip. We found them by the fireplace in the front room. And there’s this, sir.’ Ballard took a small object wrapped in a handkerchief out of his pocket. When he laid it on the scabby, flaking paint of the windowsill, Stratton saw that it was a rusty tobacco tin: Old Holborn.

  ‘It seems he took souvenirs, sir.’

  ‘Sou— Oh, Christ.’ The lid open, Stratton could see four separate clumps of short, coarse hair, which had been carefully teased out into ringlets so that they looked like nests for miniature birds. ‘Pubic?’

  ‘I think so, sir, yes.’

  ‘Where did you find that thing?’

  ‘Medicine cabinet in the kitchen. Behind the door, sir.’

  ‘Anything else in there?’

  ‘Lot of tablets, sir. Tonics and sedatives and God knows what else. Harris is making a list. And the other tenants are back – the ones who live on the top floor. Young coloured couple.’

  ‘See if you can’t get one of the neighbours to make them a cup of tea. What about the ones on the first floor?’

  ‘It’s the same chap, sir – Mr Gardiner. He’s back in hospital, so I don’t think—’ Ballard was interrupted by a discreet cough from the direction of the back door, now blocked by the burly form of PC Canning, claw hammer dangling from one meaty hand. ‘Found another one, sir.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The floorboards from the centre of the room were stacked in front of the fireplace. Looking down, Stratton saw that one of the joists had been sawn away to make room for body number four, which was encased in a flannelette blanket, lashed at each end and covered with a dusting of earth. When the photographer had finished, Canning and Tillotson removed the body with an effort and stood back for McNally to do his work.

  ‘Definitely a Boy Scout … Safety pins as well, this time. Perhaps he ran out of rope.’

  Like the previous two, the head was wrapped, this time in what looked like part of a sheet. The body, which was considerably stockier and heavier than the others, was naked apart from stockings. It was covered on top by a nightgown, with what appeared to be a dress lying beneath. McNally lifted the nightgown, exposing the heavy breasts and belly. The skin was hard and mouldy like the outside of a cheddar cheese. As with the other two bodies, there was a garment of some sort stuffed between the legs. ‘That first one …’ said McNally, ‘he must have been interrupted before he could do all this, so he just stuck her in the cupboard as she was. This one’s a good bit older than the others,’ he added. ‘Both in terms of age and of how long she’s been here.’ Ballard and Stratton exchanged glances as he began unwrapping the material from the head. Suddenly, the reek of putrefaction hit Stratton like a blow to the face, making him gag.

  ‘Damp air getting in somewhere,’ said the pathologist in a matter-of-fact voice, as if giving a lecture. Forcing himself to turn his head, Stratton saw that while the right side of the woman’s face was dry, and covered with the same mould as her body, the left side was decomposing wetly so that the features appeared to have slipped and melted down the side of the cheek.

  Fighting rising nausea, Stratton turned to look at Ballard who, although so pale in the face that he was almost translucent, seemed steady enough on his feet. He could feel the stink wrapping itself around him, clinging to his clothes like smoke. Better you smell of dead women than live ones, Jenny’d once said, in an unusual moment of black humour – except she wasn’t there to care what he smelt of … Still, he’d better give himself a good scrub before— Oh, Christ. The bloody party. Pete. He’d never be able to get back in time – he’d have to telephone Doris later. Pete would understand.

  ‘Cause of death?’ he asked the pathologist.

  ‘Not sure yet. There are some grooves h
ere,’ McNally pointed to the neck, ‘but the condition of the skin …’ He shook his head.

  ‘Can you say how long?’

  ‘At least a couple of months, I’d say.’

  ‘The neighbour said Mrs Backhouse had been away for about three months, sir,’ said Ballard quietly.

  As they followed the draped and stretchered corpse outside to the ambulance, Stratton was aware of a low, expectant hum, which stopped as Canning stepped backwards out of the front door with his end of the load. Following with Ballard, he stopped on the threshold and stared out at the crowd of mainly women and children who stood in a half circle around the ambulance, three and four deep. They were being kept at a distance by two policemen, helmeted and wearing overcoats, who were watching over the vehicle with the proprietorial air of shepherds guarding a flock.

  Judging by the numbers Stratton thought it was a fair bet that, as well as neighbours, the usual collection of ghouls were present, who’d thrill to carnage and catastrophe of any kind. In fact, Stratton often thought that given the speed with which they turned up in such situations, they must somehow be able to sense it. You could tell who they were by their gawping; they were avid and shameless. The other faces bore degrees of shocked or guilty fascination and some of the kids had a slightly distracted look, as if they couldn’t concentrate wholly on what was unfolding because they had to be on the lookout in case their parents caught them at it. They needn’t have worried: from what Stratton could see most of the parents – the mothers, at least – were in the crowd as well. Some of them, he realised, must have been here when they’d come for Muriel Davies; but if anybody did recognise him, they were keeping it to themselves, which was a relief.