No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries)

by John Gardner

  At this point they had no idea that WDS Mountford was receiving assistance from a senior police officer, DCS Livermore, known to the more colourful journalists as Dandy Tom on account of his stylish clothes made for him by one of the more flamboyant tailors of Savile Row.

  Suzie had not come across Tommy Livermore before she was told to look to him as her adviser and mentor. Listening to him on the telephone she conjured up a middle-aged man of conservative outlook and dress, so when she finally got to meet him the shock was more than considerable.

  He strode into the foyer of Devonshire Mansions, off Marylebone High Street, where Suzie was investigating a lead in the Benton case. He marched in with his retinue around him. ‘Orchestra, dancing girls and a male voice choir,’ as Suzie said to Shirley Cox, Tommy wearing his tailored, double-breasted dark overcoat, the Homburg tilted at a rakish angle. Like a souped-up Anthony Eden, she thought. Her mother, like so many middle-class English women at the time, adored Anthony Eden and thought him ‘the most gorgeous man ever’. But to Suzie it was Tommy Livermore with his raffish smile, lifting one side of his mouth, the glint in his eye and the self-deprecating humour that won her within seconds.

  Later, she realised that a spark had leapt between them in the vastness of the old art deco foyer of Devonshire Mansions: the well-known static crackle that can pass between a male and female who recognise each other as probable lovers. The flash of revelation remained with her, though, after that first introduction, she had second thoughts, wondering if she was mistaken about the almost tangible charge moving both ways: after all, he was a senior officer with a lot of clout. She had grown up in the Thirties and now, in 1940, the class distinctions were still at their peak, and the old middle-class pigeon-holes were after all set in stone.

  But when the chief super asked her out to dinner her heart leapt and for a moment she thought the unthinkable.

  The lightning between them had been there again when he picked her up from the flat and drove her to the Ritz, but any flirtation was quashed once they had taken their seats in the grand Louis Quinze dining room and Tommy became all business, explaining to her that she had, in many ways, been working directly for him since she’d been promoted, and would she like to officially work for him and with him – in the Reserve Squad – from now on?

  It appeared that Tommy, with a few others – a very few – had been thinking in terms of a different world, and a different time, when the war was over. Unbelievably they had concluded that when this happened many of the women who had served in the armed forces, the police, even the fire service, would not be best pleased to be scuttling back into the role of housewives and mothers: subservient partners of ‘breadwinners’. Large numbers of women, they felt, would be ready to go on living and working in key jobs, not least of all in the police forces.

  ‘If we can start to form the nucleus of what will eventually be powerful groups of senior women within the Met, then we can at best have a foundation upon which we can build.’ He paused, eyeing her up across the starched napery, glittering silverware and shining smooth glasses.

  ‘It’ll take decades,’ he added. ‘Men don’t like change and will prefer to think of women in the home. In the bed. In the kitchen.’

  Once more the little sparkle passed between them, and she gave a silent gasp, felt something tighten within, move up, coil around her heart and squeeze.

  ‘And you’re suggesting that I’m one of the Class of 1940,’ she said.

  Tommy gave her a smirk. ‘Oh, heart, you are the class of 1940. We picked six of you, pulled you in from the typewriters, the tea makers, the duty cells, the kiddie patrol, the whore minding, the nursing and doing the inspector’s shopping of a Wednesday afternoon. We shoved half a dozen of you out into a whole rack of divisions, under some of the hardest cases in the Met. Then we sat back and watched. We’re doing the same thing in January with a new half-dozen. God help them.’

  Silently, Suzie wondered about how she had done in this test that she had no idea she was taking.

  As if hearing her he said, ‘As for your lot, four of the girls folded in a month, the fifth is about to crumble any minute. Couldn’t take it, didn’t like the atmosphere, felt they couldn’t slap a detective inspector’s face when he stuck a hand up their drawers, didn’t like it when the men tweaked their titties, or patted their soft little behinds. You name it, they couldn’t deal with it: couldn’t take the responsibility; couldn’t do the job.’

  She remembered that she felt the flush rise from her neck and sluice across her face.

  ‘On the other hand, you, heart, got a break.’ Pause, big smile. ‘I think you’ve done wonderfully.’ Smile again, this time for the cameras.

  She recalled that at the time his praise was like pouring a stiff brandy down her throat, a warm flush spreading through her body and a quick sense of lightness, the whirl of intoxication.

  As they left the Ritz Tommy said, ‘But, like I said, heart, it’s going to take coppers decades before they’ll accept women as police officers.’

  He was right, they hadn’t come near to accepting women, even now in 1944, and she couldn’t see it happening in the foreseeable future.

  Now, in the present, Shirley arrived in Upper St Martin’s Lane, with Dennis Free driving the crimson Railton and enjoying it, feeling no end of a lad. Meanwhile, Suzie was warm and comfortable, the sensation induced by the memory of that dinner at the Ritz. Nothing had happened until much later, after the horrific Christmas when he’d been down to Kingscote, ‘Flogging peasants,’ as she had cheekily named it. After that his trips to Kingscote Grange were always to flog peasants. But that year, 1940 he had come steaming back from the family seat on Christmas Day to deal with the dreadful events that surrounded Suzie’s family.

  It was only later she discovered the electric charge had gone both ways, and some weeks later Tommy Livermore made a woman of her – sooner rather than later. But that was after Christmas, near to the time he made her a stalking horse, a tethered goat to catch the revolting schizoid who had corrupted their lives at the time: the one he had called the bottled spider.

  But Tommy really wooed me, she thought. Wooed me properly, and rightly. We should be married.

  Dennis had the envelope from the Branch with Woolly Bear’s Strictly Confidential neat in the top left-hand corner above the address to Suzie at the Reserve Squad.

  She read it in the car going over to Silverhurst Road and the convent.

  Now it was essential for her to ring Tommy in Sheffield.

  At the convent, she told Dennis and Shirley to nip over to the nick and get the pix from Magnus. ‘And if he tries to play silly buggers threaten to telephone the ADC (Crime) and ring me here, at the convent.’

  Dennis grinned. ‘My pleasure,’ he said, not meaning it, a lowly DC phoning the ADC and telling tales about a DI. Horsefeathers.

  Sister Eunice told her yes, they had a photo of Sister Theresa. A snap of Winifred Audrey Lees-Duncan. ‘We take a picture for our records on the day an individual is accepted as a novice. Keep them. Interesting to look back and see what some of the older sisters looked like when they were bright young sparks.’ She dropped her voice to almost a whisper. ‘Mother Rachel was a real bobby dazzler when she arrived. No end of a bright young thing.’

  And yes, of course they could have it. Take it. She’d get a brown utility envelope.

  Then the good Sister Eunice left Suzie, in her room here with the sit-up-and-beg telephone, the tall crucifix on the wall next to a holy picture, left alone, so she could put a trunk call through to Sheffield and her boss, master and lover Tommy Livermore.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In Sheffield, Tommy wasn’t much concerned now with Pete Hill, the first suspect. Ron and Laura, with the aid of local officers, had followed up on the man’s weekend cover and, yes, he had been in London, just as he’d said, ‘With that Mr Ashworth, the one they called Cherry,’ being interviewed by Americans to assess their suitability for doing electrical work in the
US hospitals in southern England: a job for which he had applied on behalf of his small company.

  In spite of this supposed cast-iron alibi Tommy still wasn’t happy, wanted to dig deeper, wondered why the Yanks would allow men from the north to travel down to their hospitals: why they’d employ civilian electricians anyway? They seemed to have enough specialists of their own. Built their own bloody hospitals, had better equipment than our people; did every blasted thing and cleaned up after themselves and all. Bloody Yanks. Oversexed, overpaid and over here.

  He saw Hill anyway, only for a few minutes, asking one last question as he left the interview room.

  ‘Got any smokes on you, Pete?’ patting his pockets, looking as though he’d lost sixpence and found a button: twitchy at not having a fag.

  ‘Don’t use them.’ Pete Hill pulled out a pipe, and grinned, tapping his teeth with the stem.

  In the hidey-hole among the trees and bushes behind Doris Butler’s house, the watcher had smoked Gold Flake cigarettes. Tommy thought if he found a possible whose preference was Gold Flake he’d have something to go on. You couldn’t pick and choose though. A bloke who smoked Gold Flake might really prefer Players or De Reske. You bought what you could get these days. Some were even reduced to Abdullah. Horrible. Turkish.

  So, now it was Kenneth Craig’s turn. Ken Craig: short, thin with a washed-out face and eyes the colour of a clouded summer’s day: dark ringed eyes, deep and furtive. To Tommy it was as though the intelligence in the man’s eyes had withdrawn, lurking somewhere inside his brain, behind a boulder of frontal lobe, peering round, listening not to the questions but what was behind the questions.

  Ken Craig had no form, nothing known: but what had that to do with anything?

  Tommy gave him a smile and asked why he was not in HM Forces. Craig beamed back, slyly, the fingers of his right hand indicating the circular silver badge in the left lapel of his sports coat, telling he had done his military duty. ‘Dunkirk,’ the man said, his voice touching on husky so that he paused clearing his throat.

  ‘Dunkirk,’ he repeated. ‘Those bloody Stukas got to me.’

  ‘You were injured, wounded?’

  Craig leant forward, cupping his right ear. ‘That dive bombing made me a gibbering wreck. Damaged me hearing, knocked the stuffing out of me. Give me the shakes.’ He swallowed, eyes even more shifty. The Stukas were Junkers 87s, the ones with the strange, crooked wings, the long, wide slats on the trailing edges, and the sirens attached to their big fixed undercarriages so they could make a dreadful shriek as they plunged towards their targets.

  ‘Pretty tough on the beaches, yes?’ Tommy prepared to hear the whole story, but not holding with men who went soft because of a few bombs. Tommy wasn’t a naturally sympathetic man. Got to keep your end up, he’d say, got to rise above it, be a man.

  ‘Tough? Tough en’t the word … Mister…? Mister…?’ Clawing for the name they’d told him.

  ‘Livermore,’ Tommy supplied flatly, almost with disinterest.

  ‘Mr Livermore.’ Giving the impression that he was trying to be very polite and helpful. ‘Tough? It were bloody murder. It were living on the edge of death, close to the pit, wi’ old Satan leerin’ out on you. Hell. That’s what it was.’

  What is Hell?

  Hell is oneself.

  Hell is alone,

  * * *

  Tommy thought the bit about Satan was over the top, and he didn’t believe that Craig had to scratch around for his name because he was always in the papers – the Hon. Tommy Livermore, the copper most often on the front page. Dandy Tom Does It Again they would write.

  ‘Most unpleasant,’ he said aloud, as though he didn’t believe a word of the Dunkirk story. ‘How long were you there? On the beaches?’

  ‘Four days. And the sergeant major kept sayin’ things like, “Men who ’ave not brought their buckets and spades will not be allowed to paddle”, daft things like that. Didn’t make it any easier.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it did. I know a lot of officers who were there: said the noise and the people were difficult. What do you do with yourself now, Ken?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Kenneth Craig raising his cold blue eyes to look straight at Tommy. ‘Nay, I can only do part-time work. Doctor has me on pills, supposed to make me less worried, but what does doctor know? Bloody pills and a bottle of some muck. I take ’em and they only give me constipation. I’m anxious all the time. Can’t keep me mind still. Me thoughts like a bloody merry-go-round jangling about.’

  * * *

  Eventually he asked Craig where he lived, knowing full well that the man lived with his mother, his father dead ten years ago in an accident.

  ‘And how do you manage? Financially, I mean.’

  ‘I have my Army pension. We manage.’

  ‘No work at all?’

  ‘A bit here, a bit there.’ Pause. ‘Like I said, can’t do much. Bit of delivering.’

  ‘Delivering what, Ken?’

  ‘Things. Letters an’ that; for council. Council runner they calls me, make it sound military. Rent collector an’ all.’

  ‘Ever go up Bluefields Road?’

  ‘Come on, Mr Livermore.’ The sly look and thin smile again. ‘You know I been up Bluefields. That meddlesome busybody Phyll Meecham as was, her that married Martin Carter, in the Navy. Number 63. She’s told you I been up at 65, Doris Butler’s house. You know it. Very bad with payin’ the rent, Mrs Carter. Very bad. Offered me a bargain once.’

  ‘I know it,’ Livermore agreed, then paused. He didn’t know it, but could guess. ‘Up to no good, Ken. Got a fag?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ diving into his pocket, coming out with a packet of Gold Flake, giving a momentary jerk as he realised he had walked into something, wasn’t sure what, but there was something just over the horizon.

  Tommy leant over, helped himself to a cigarette, took out his lighter – a Zippo he’d had off an American serviceman he’d interviewed in some nick, West End Central probably, off Regent Street – and lit his first, as was his right, then stretched out and lit Ken Craig’s smoke.

  ‘Used to watch her, did you, Ken? From the trees at the edge of her little garden?’ The cigarette butts stubbed into the earth were all Gold Flake. ‘One day,’ Tommy had said when they were collecting the fag ends, ‘One day, we’ll be able to put the smoker to the fag from his saliva on the tip. Save a lot of time that will and one day the boffins’ll be able to do that.’

  Ken Craig shifted uncomfortably and wouldn’t meet Tommy’s eye. ‘Come on, Kenneth, you can tell me. In the long summer evenings you’d creep up there and hide. And you’d watch through the trees.’ He didn’t say anything else then, but he thought a lot. Couldn’t prove a bloody thing, but … then Craig broke off, raised his eyes and finally gave Tommy a cold, blue, hard look.

  ‘She used to leave the windows open sometimes, and she’d undress in front of them.’ He gave a low rumble of childish giggle, his hands going to his waist as though recalling her taking her undies off, mimicking it. Thumbs running around her waist under the elastic.

  Tommy nodded. ‘And you let yourself in through the kitchen door, right?’

  ‘Bloody ’ell, no. No, I never been inside there, not ever in her house. No.’ Much too quick.

  ‘You sure, Ken?’

  ‘Sure as eggs, Mr … Livermore?’

  Tommy nodded. So.

  ‘I never did,’ Craig said, his voice moving up the scale. ‘I never went in, not even when I took up stuff from the council, saying her rent was overdue. Knocked at the door always, see if she were in and have a word with her, but I never put a foot over the doorstep.’

  ‘All right,’ Tommy nodded, speaking quietly. ‘All right, Ken, but you saw other people inside with her.’

  ‘Oh yeah. ’Course. Saw a lot of them and she used to take off her clothes with them. Go Humpty Dumpty with them.’

  ‘You saw that?’

  ‘Yes. Not half.’

  ‘You’re telling me the truth, Kenn
eth? Not telling porkies? You just watched her from that little den? Didn’t leave it: didn’t go into the house? Didn’t go higgledy-piggledy with her?’

  ‘Never, sir. No. Never did.’ Long pause as though thinking about it. ‘No. I did not.’

  Tommy wondered again, inclined to believe the man, smelt right, sounded right. But … No. No, of course not.

  ‘You recognise any of them? Any of them you saw with her?’

  ‘I know all of ’em.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There’s two I seen here today. Here in the station. In the nick.’

  ‘Tell me, Kenneth.’

  ‘Well, there’s the other bloke you been seeing. Old Pete Hill.’

  ‘You saw Pete with her?’

  ‘Clear as day, doing the business.’

  ‘And who else, Ken?’

  ‘That sergeant. Sergeant Dave Mungo. Seen him there with her in the buff, going at it hammer and tongs: going like a steam engine and she went off like a train whistle at the end. “Whooooo, oooooh Dave, David, ooooooh!” Saw and heard the whole thing. “Wheeeeooowww,” she went, like the Flying Scotsman.’

  DS Dave Mungo, to whom Tommy had been introduced on the previous evening. ‘My right hand: my fighting arm, even though he’s only here on attachment,’ DCS Berry had said, and Tommy had shaken the man’s hand. Now, he unconsciously wiped that same hand on the back of his trousers.

  Mungo had what journalists called rugged good looks, bit craggy, bright and tall, bronzed, outdoor lifeish, hey ho, the wind and the rain, bit of sun thrown in. Mungo had moved, stepped forward, a smidgeon too close to Tommy. ‘We should speak, sir.’ The smile a touch too ingratiating. ‘Sometime. Yes,’ Tommy had said, knowing of old the CID coppers who tried to butter him up, get close and transferred to the Reserve Squad, thought it was glamorous, full of action, place to be.