A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  For a moment, there was no sound. Perhaps Mrs Lisle wasn’t there. Perhaps she’d moved away, or died … or been arrested. Perhaps the police were waiting and it was a trap and she, too, would be arrested, and Dad would—

  Hearing footsteps – only one set – from within, Monica told herself not to be stupid. It was bound to be unpleasant, but then it would be over. It occurred to her then, as she listened to the bolts being slid back, that she had no idea of what the procedure was.

  The door opened a fraction and a woman with a beetroot complexion surrounded by tight rolls of greasy hair stuck her head through the gap and eyed Monica suspiciously. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you Mrs Lisle?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  Taken aback by the woman’s aggression, but determined to stand her ground, Monica said, ‘I do.’

  ‘Why’s that, then?’

  ‘I understand that you might be able to … help me.’

  ‘Help you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m in trouble. I’ve got some money, and—’

  In a flash the door opened and before Monica could think or act, Mrs Lisle had bundled her inside and shut the door. Under the gas in the hallway, she could see that the woman’s face wasn’t beetroot-coloured at all, but a fairly normal sort of dull pink, and that her clothes and apron looked quite clean.

  ‘Sorry, dear,’ she said briskly, ushering Monica into a small back room which was empty but for a chair and a ratty-looking chaise longue with stuffing hanging out of the bottom, ‘but I can’t have you telling my business to all and sundry. Now then …’ Her face softened. ‘Been a silly girl, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Monica. ‘I’m afraid I have.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Lisle, quite kindly, ‘you’re not the first and I daresay you won’t be the last. Got the money, have you?’

  Monica nodded.

  ‘You sit down there, then,’ said Mrs Lisle, pointing to the chaise longue. ‘Take off your knickers and make yourself comfy. Don’t you worry, I always have a good old boil up first so it’s all clean.’

  Left alone, Monica did as instructed. She lay down gingerly on the lumpy, saggy cushions and stared up at the ceiling wondering how many women and girls had done the same thing before her. She must find something to concentrate on while it was happening. Unlike the spotless linoleum on the floor – a good sign, she thought, like Mrs Lisle’s clean apron – the ceiling offered any number of possibilities. There were the brown clouds of damp stains in various shapes, an area by the door that was leopard-flecked with mould spores, and a cluster of frilly-edged mushrooms in one of the corners. Monica chose a damp patch that looked like a dog’s face, or a shadow puppet of one, anyway, with a long nose and pricked ears. It looked like a friendly dog, with its mouth slightly open as though it were panting and smiling at the same time. She could imagine that it was real, an ally, guarding her … Keep looking at it, she told herself. Whatever happens, no matter how much it hurts, just keep looking.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  ‘You’re in luck, Inspector,’ said the desk sergeant at Victoria station. ‘He’s just brought someone in. If you wouldn’t mind waiting …’

  After about five minutes, the desk sergeant reappeared, tailed by a middle-aged man who appeared to be the size and consistency of a barn door. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, when Stratton had explained the situation – although without mentioning his personal involvement – ‘I don’t rightly know where she might have gone. I know she didn’t have any money to speak of, and she didn’t seem quite right in herself, if you know what I mean … She was all-in last night, so I don’t think she could have got very far, even with a bit of a sleep, although I don’t suppose you get much in a hostel. I’d say your best bet might be one of the cafés round here. I could show you the likely ones. Do you want to stop for a cup of tea first? I hope you don’t mind my saying, sir, but you look as if you could do with it.’

  Understanding that Eliot’s offer was made out of kindness, rather than the – perfectly understandable – desire to keep the weight off his feet for a few more minutes, Stratton declined, and the two of them went out into the night.

  ‘There’s Handy’s Café, just down there next the boot repairer. The New Scala Café’s in the next street, and then there’s Rossi’s Café down by the scrap metal yard and the Croxley Tea Room.’ PC Eliot paused to grin, then added, ‘That makes it sound a lot more respectable than it is, by the way.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Stratton.

  As they made their way towards Handy’s, PC Eliot said, ‘Your Mrs Carleton seemed a cut above the usual type we take off the street, sir. Quite a long way above, in fact. Nicely spoken, good clothes … Was it some sort of breakdown?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Stratton, truthfully. ‘I was given her name in connection with the disappearance of this young woman,’ – also true, as far as it went – ‘but if she is in some sort of trouble, perhaps we can get in touch with her family.’

  ‘I had the impression,’ said Eliot, slowly, ‘that she didn’t have anyone. And she said she’d just read about her husband’s death in the newspaper.’

  ‘Well,’ said Stratton, ‘we’ll get to the bottom of it somehow.’ Distancing himself from the whole business by treating it as though it were an official enquiry made it easier somehow and, for the first time since he’d read Monica’s note, he felt as if he had room in his mind to think. He certainly wouldn’t get anywhere if he kept letting his feelings get in the way. If, he wondered, he hadn’t kept thinking about Jenny and the baby, would he have come to a different conclusion about Davies? Preconceived ideas meant that you were looking for evidence to support your theory, which was exactly what he – and everyone else – had done. However much he might want to excuse himself, that was what it came down to in the end.

  There was only one person in Handy’s Café, a grim-faced elderly woman who was scanning the flyblown menu in her hand as though it were a casualty list. When the proprietor, who looked scarcely more cheerful, shook his head at Stratton’s description of Diana, they left. The New Scala and Rossi’s were both closed for the night, but a glance through the steamed-up window of the Croxley Tea Room – festoons of dusty artificial ivy nailed across faded bamboo-patterned wallpaper – showed that it was packed.

  ‘Do you see her, sir?’ asked Eliot, at Stratton’s elbow.

  ‘Not sure …’ There were three women with their backs to him, two of whom were wearing fur coats, but the condensation and fug of smoke made it hard to tell. ‘Let’s go in.’

  As the two men entered, rows of docile, tired faces turned in their direction. At the sight of Eliot’s uniform, the murmur of conversation ceased, and a dozen loaded forks and slices of bread seemed to hang in the air, arrested in their progress towards partially open mouths. Stratton’s eye took in bright, lipstick-smeared gashes, yellow teeth, glimpses of liver-coloured tongues, and then, as if led by an invisible pointer, came to rest on a bald, domed pate in the very centre of the crowded room.

  He stopped in his tracks, staring in disbelief. Everything seemed to have slowed down, so that the next few moments had an unreal, almost dreamlike quality. The owner of the pate, who was still staring down at the table, was slight, and wearing a tweed overcoat. His thumb and forefinger were curled around the handle of a cup of tea, the little finger stretched out in an exaggerated show of gentility as he began to lift it to his mouth. As he did so, he raised his head, and Stratton found himself looking straight into the eyes, blinking rapidly behind their pebble glasses, of Norman Backhouse.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  ‘Two birds with one stone you might say, sir.’ PC Eliot looked jubilant. Stratton couldn’t blame him. ‘Extraordinary that none of them had recognised him when he’s had his face all over the papers.’

  ‘Well, he’d changed his clothes – the description we put out had him wearing a blue overcoat, so I suppose he must have swapped it somewhere along the way. And perhaps the people in the café
hadn’t read the papers.’ Stratton knew, as he said the last bit, that it was ridiculous. It was far more likely that several of the patrons of the Croxley Tea Room – and wherever else Backhouse had been – had seen someone who looked vaguely familiar, but, not knowing why he was familiar, had dismissed it with no more thought. But it was, by a very long chalk, the strangest arrest that he’d ever made. Eliot’s gasp of recognition, the loaded, expectant silence in the café as he spoke the words, the look on Backhouse’s face – something, to Stratton’s astonishment, that was almost like relief – then hearing Eliot say, ‘Mrs Carleton?’ and then a woman’s voice, small and clear, like something dropped into a void: ‘Inspector Stratton?’

  When he’d turned and seen Diana sitting on the other side of the table, he’d thought for a second that he must be having a hallucination and had stood, blinking and open-mouthed, until a discreet cough from Eliot recalled him to his senses. Then, turning from Diana to Backhouse in confusion, seeing that they were together but unable to make any connection between them in his mind because it seemed so unlikely – so wrong – he’d stood silent and appalled, and it was left to Eliot to hustle Backhouse out of the place and onto the pavement. ‘We’ll need a statement,’ he’d told Diana abruptly, hiding a welter of feeling behind his official self. ‘So if you would accompany us …?’

  The journey to West End Central had been extraordinary, too. In the car (PC Eliot had taken Diana in a separate vehicle) Backhouse had started rabbiting on about his health as though Stratton were a doctor or something – fibrositis and enteritis and hospital and a nervous breakdown caused by persecution from the coloured tenants at Paradise Street – and he’d listened, incredulous, his mind reeling. Clearly, Backhouse wanted – perhaps even expected – his sympathy, or at least his understanding. But what the hell had Diana, of all people, been doing with him?

  ‘Where did you meet Mrs Carleton?’ he asked, cutting across Backhouse’s whispered, carefully enunciated confidences about his diarrhoea and how he’d left his medicine in his suitcase at the Rowton House at King’s Cross.

  Backhouse swallowed. ‘In the park. Green Park. We were just having a cup of tea together. I’m afraid, Inspector, that she wanted me to …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Well, she was making suggestions. She wanted me to go away with her …’

  Sensing Stratton’s outrage, Backhouse fell silent for a moment and then, as if unable to help himself, continued, ‘Of course, I told her I wasn’t interested in anything of that sort—’

  ‘If I were you,’ Stratton said, ‘I’d keep my mouth shut until we get to the station. Otherwise …’ He jerked the wrist that was cuffed to Backhouse’s. ‘Understand?’

  Backhouse pushed his lips into an ‘o’ and moistened them with the tip of his tongue. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Stratton stared fixedly ahead. There’d be hours of this to come – unctuous, self-serving hypocrisy – but he was buggered if he was going to listen to it now, especially if it involved lies about Diana. Just occupying the same space as the snivelling little sod was nauseating enough. Ballard must have left a message by now, he thought. Surely the girl Anne must know something …

  ‘There’s something, Inspector, it’s about my wife …’

  Stratton clenched his free fist. ‘I’ve warned you, Backhouse. No more until you’re at the station.’

  ‘But I’d like you to know, Inspector.’ Backhouse blinked at him. He seemed to know that there wasn’t anything Stratton could do to him in the car, no matter how much he wanted to. Stratton saw the driver’s shoulders stiffening, and every single sinew of his own body seemed to throb with the desire to throttle the man. ‘She was suffering so much, and I couldn’t bear to see it … I didn’t want to be separated from her, Inspector. That’s why I put her under the floorboards in the bedroom, to keep her with me … I wanted her to be near me, you see.’

  He thinks he’s showing me what a loving husband he was, thought Stratton, revolted. Wound now to breaking point, he snapped. ‘If you’re so keen to talk, Norman,’ he said, ‘tell me this. When did you fuck them? Was it before or after you murdered them? Prefer a cold fuck, do you, Norman? A tart without a pulse? Why don’t you tell me about that?’

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  The rest of the journey took place in silence. Backhouse having been removed to the cells at West End Central – ‘I’ll deal with him later,’ Stratton had growled at the officer in charge, ‘just get him out of my sight before I do something I’ll regret’ – the desk sergeant appeared with a message. ‘From Sergeant Ballard, sir. Came in half an hour ago. We knew you were on your way, so … He said you’d know what it was about, sir.’

  Informant unwilling but eventually persuaded to talk, Stratton read. Following lead Camden Town. Have alerted station there. Will call back soonest. That was something, at least, he thought. Firmly suppressing any speculation about what might be happening to Monica if Ballard – or the local constabulary – had failed to get there in time, he made arrangements for Backhouse’s suitcase to be retrieved from the doss house in King’s Cross and transferred to the police laboratory. There is nothing I can do for Monica, he told himself. Ballard was a good man – the best – and could be trusted to look after his daughter and handle things at the Camden Town station with discretion. All he could do was wait for news of Monica, and for Diana to arrive. Telling the desk sergeant to let him know immediately if Ballard telephoned again, he went to the office, which proved to be full of jubilant coppers waiting to slap him on the back. There was even a message of congratulation from DCI Lamb.

  Excusing himself as soon as he decently could, he made for the lavatory which, thank God, was empty. Finding coherent thought impossible, he settled for pacing up and down in front of the row of basins, trying to blot out the hideous carousel of images – Monica, Backhouse, Davies, cupboards full of corpses, soil planted with bones and teeth, stains of decomposition on clothing and bedding, and the filthy deckchair with its canvas of knotted rope – that went round and round inside his head.

  Diana, dishevelled and exhausted, was slumped over a cup of tea in the interview room. She was thinner, Stratton thought, as he sat down opposite her, and, under the harsh light of the single bare bulb, her expression seemed somehow harder and more vulnerable at the same time, the cheekbones sharply angular and the enormous eyes bruised with tiredness. ‘PC Eliot explained everything to me,’ she said, before he could speak. ‘He said you probably saved my life.’

  ‘I think that’s putting it a bit strongly,’ said Stratton, embarrassed. ‘I’m sure,’ he added, ‘you wouldn’t have placed yourself in that sort of danger.’ As he spoke, he realised that he wasn’t sure of any such thing – Diana had put herself in danger before, with Ventriss, hadn’t she? And she’d seemed so helpless, so bloody passive, when he’d warned her about the man, unwilling or unable – perhaps both – to protect herself. Remembering his visit to her former landlady and his feeling of outrage at the woman’s implication that Diana was some sort of whore, he thought, surely she couldn’t have sunk so low? People did change, but not that much … Still, there was clearly a lot more to it than met the eye.

  ‘Those women,’ said Diana, as if she’d guessed what he was thinking, ‘the ones he killed, they were prostitutes, weren’t they?’

  Unable to look at her, Stratton said, ‘Most of them. One was his wife. That man,’ he said, in a lighter tone, ‘makes Claude Ventriss look like an angel of mercy.’ He felt, rather than saw, Diana’s head jerk back as though she’d been slapped in the face, and wished he hadn’t spoken. It wasn’t fair, and certainly not chivalrous, to remind her of what he knew. Ashamed, he busied himself patting his pockets for his cigarettes. When he raised his eyes to hers again she was sitting upright, and – despite the dereliction of hair and make-up – was once more recognisable as the well-bred, expensive product of deportment lessons and finishing school that he’d first met thirteen years earlier.

  ‘PC Eliot sa
id you wanted to see me,’ she said coldly. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘It’s about Monica,’ said Stratton. Now that she was here, in front of him, the whole thing seemed absurd, but he felt that some sort of explanation, however lame, was in order. ‘My daughter. I know you both worked at Ashwood – she mentioned you. She’s in some trouble, and I thought you might know …’

  Diana was shaking her head. ‘I haven’t seen Monica since I stopped working at the studio. Didn’t …’ She stopped, the veneer cracking. ‘I mean … Oh, dear. I suppose PC Eliot must have told you what happened.’

  ‘Yes. Your husband.’ Stratton tried momentarily to think of something adequately comforting to say, failed, and settled for, ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Carleton. If there’s anything—’

  ‘Diana, please. We’re a bit past Mrs Carleton now, aren’t we? What’s happened to Monica?’

  ‘She’s pregnant. The man’s married, and she … well, she’s run off and I’m worried she might have done something stupid. I had an idea she might have … well, she mentioned you on a number of occasions, and I thought—’

  Two hard blotches of colour had appeared on Diana’s pale cheeks. ‘You thought that I might have helped her arrange a backstreet abortion without your knowledge? I can well imagine what you must think of me, Inspector Stratton, but I can assure you I have done nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Please …’ Stratton’s face felt as though it were on fire. ‘I’m very worried about her, and I just … I didn’t know what to think. My sergeant’s gone to see if he can find her – she seems to have gone to see someone in Camden Town – and I’d be there myself, but it seemed like a bit of a long shot and … Well, I’m sorry. I’ll find someone to take your statement, and then you’re free to—’

  ‘No, please!’ Diana cried out, and Stratton stared at her, disconcerted by the sudden change of tone. He felt a sudden bond with her – both wretched, both unhappy in their different ways, both uncertain of the future. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘I’m the one who should be sorry, not you. It was a perfectly fair question, and I shouldn’t have reared up like that. You must be out of your mind with worry. Why don’t you stay here? Unless you’ve got other things to do, of course – but you could take my statement about that man, Mr …’