No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries)

by John Gardner

  Voltsenvogel nodded.

  ‘Then there were the fuelling difficulties allied to the launching. We also have the unfortunate problems with the turbo steam pumps.’

  Voltsenvogel raised a hand as if accepting fate.

  ‘And latterly there has been a more serious malfunction.’ Lottle squared his shoulders as though preparing to give Voltsenvogel the worst possible news. ‘The rocket is breaking up from its warhead above its impact point.’

  Voltsenvogel listened almost as gloomily as the adjutant. Finally he asked how long it was estimated before they expected to have dealt with the faults. ‘My dear Lottle, we need to get the A-4 into action. The Führer depends on it now the Allies have arrived.’

  ‘Four, five, six weeks,’ Lottle told him as though this was some minor hiccough in the works. Also as if they had eternity to get the A-4 into operation. ‘Everything has been overcome except for the new, breakup disasters. The warhead is detaching itself from the main rocket as it reaches its apogee and starts the downward journey. These are naturally stabilisation difficulties. They are working on modifications of the tail fins.’

  ‘And your four, five, six weeks is realistic?’

  ‘I would say no later than September.’

  It had better be early September, Voltsenvogel thought to himself. The rocket was essential now they were under such pressure along the northern coast of Fortress Europe. The Fi-103s had proved to be a huge success. The Allies back in England were stumbling and petrified by the new danger, for they had written off any further assault from the skies now that the Luftwaffe had been defeated. He had heard the Führer say they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. ‘Tell Himmler that,’ and he had laughed. Himmler, of course, had once been a chicken farmer.

  Voltsenvogel remained sanguine regarding the future. The Allies may well have their foot inside Fortress Europe but he was convinced they would never defeat Germany. It was unthinkable and he played his own part in the great struggle. Even now he was involved in an operation that remained uniquely his and profoundly secret: a plan that would rock the Allies back on their heels and make them slacken their tenuous grip on Normandy. The A-4 rocket would play its part in what would be the greatest psychological defeat of the war.

  The key components for the operation were already in place in England. All but the launching of the V-2 rockets were in position for Operation Löwenzahn. Operation Lion’s Teeth.

  Tomorrow, Voltsenvogel would return to his headquarters in Holland and continue the battle from there.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Laura Cotter stooged up Bluefields Road feeling less than happy with her lot. The air was suffused with filthy, sooty factory smoke: the red brick of the semi-detached houses grimed almost black by the pollution. In these days you didn’t produce the country’s steel without making smoke and dirt.

  Tommy Livermore said he wanted Emma Penticost and Ron Worrall with him in the interview room. Laura was to do what the initial investigating officers had omitted – go back into the victim’s life, and sort out the small print of her existence.

  The Sheffield CID had only scraped the surface of Doris Butler’s twenty-six years. They had dug out the basic information: the wedding in 1936 against her parents’ wishes – they had finally relented and given their reluctant blessing (‘So as not to spoil Doris’s day.’). Before that there were the jobs she had done: the Pitman’s shorthand/typing course, then the work, first in the council offices, one of two secretaries to the town clerk, later for a solicitor, Mr Fullalove. Friends said it was a good name for Doris to be associated with, Fullalove. Lastly, almost as an afterthought, in a footnote to the original murder reports, was the information that Doris had worked four days a week as a civilian clerk to the RTO at Sheffield’s Victoria Railway Station, through which the main London North Eastern Railway ran the most important of its trains. The RTO was a military appointment, usually Army – the officer who was law to all military persons travelling on the railways.

  Eventually Sheffield CID woke up to the fact that they couldn’t interview the parents because Mr and Mrs Haynes – Doris had been a Haynes up to the wedding – had died together in the same air raid that destroyed the Marples Hotel in the city centre: December 1940.

  Tommy saw Laura’s face when he gave her the instructions. ‘Just get on with it,’ he said. ‘Follow up. Do it,’ in that hurtful way he sometimes turned on when things went awry. ‘You know how to sort out the details of a victim. Go backwards and forwards; up and down; you never know what you’ll turn up.’

  She pulled herself together and said, ‘Yes, Chief,’ even managing a limpid smile.

  ‘Fine-tooth comb time, Laura,’ he nodded, giving her his terrible smile.

  She even heard him say, ‘Keep her out of trouble,’ as she was leaving, closing the door.

  He didn’t even let her use a car, or take someone with her. It was all bus and Shanks’s pony – as her mum used to say when she had to walk anywhere.

  There was some kind of flap on about the case; you didn’t have to get even a pass or credit in instinct to know that; also to be aware that it was something internal, in the Sheffield nick. Tommy had said he wanted Emma and Ron with him in case he lost his temper. Never a pretty sight, he said with an awful rasp. Laura thought she was best out of it. So she plodded on, her mind brimming with Detective Sergeant Dennis Free of the Reserve Squad who was off working with DI Mountford in Gloucestershire, far away. Smiling as she trudged, thinking of Dennis and his lovely, open smile, his nice, strong arms, hard body and the unruly hair that would fall in front of his eyes – ‘Lau, I’m blinded by my hair,’ he’d say in a strangulated voice. ‘I can’t see. Help me, Lau, help.’ And she’d help him and that would be nice. Crumbs how she loved Sergeant Free. Laugh through the tears, Woman Detective Constable Cotter.

  Now she was doing her job, schlepping around witnesses, digging the dirt, sorting wheat from chaff, doing a recce in depth. First off was Mrs Carter – Phyllis – neighbour of the late Mrs Butler, the one whose husband, Martin, was Fleet Air Arm: a Wopag. Wireless Operator Air Gunner.

  ‘Get in close and then work outwards,’ Tommy always counselled. ‘Talk to them. Waffle with confidence.’ Which meant pretend you know more than you do. ‘Needle them. Get under their skin, up their fundaments, wiggle about a bit.’

  Phyllis Carter’s house was, to use Laura’s mum’s favourite expression, ‘prick neat’, which she presumed had something to do with ‘clean as a new pin’, though she’d never heard anyone else use the term, ‘prick neat’. Her dad always said, ‘neat as a bee’s foot’, but he’d had Irish connections so anything he said could probably be traced to the banks of the Liffey. Anyway, Mrs Carter’s little semi looked as though she ran the Ewbank cleaner over the carpet every hour and polished the stair rods after that, then spent the afternoon with a duster stuck to her hand.

  In the front room there was a big print of cows drinking from a mountain valley stream right over the fireplace, hanging from a cord reaching up to a moveable hook over the picture rail. There was red tissue among the coal in the fireplace, and a picture of roses in a glass bowl on the wall directly opposite the Highland cattle guzzling in the foothills. The three-piece suite was obviously kept for special occasions: it had matching cushions rarely dinted and beige antimacassars over the back of the chairs, two for the settee, and a large pouffe covered in matching floral material – cabbage roses and greenery – pushed into a corner near the French windows. There was a set of nesting tables but no sign of a cup of tea with a Nice biscuit to beat back the pangs until lunchtime.

  Phyllis Carter was thin, all angles and sharp features, with light brown hair, bronze really, pulled back from her face, tied in a bun at the nape of her neck, severe, held in place with hairpins. She sat opposite Laura, but on the edge of her chair, as if the possibility of fully relaxing and putting her whole bottom on the seat was anathema to her.

  ‘I’ve told all I know,’ she
said, whining a shade defensively. Frightened eyes, Laura considered.

  ‘I just came to see if you were all right.’ Laura tried her trusting smile, holding her hands wide apart, as if inviting Phyllis in for a cuddle.

  ‘I’m fine. The newspapers’ve stopped bothering me, oh, six or seven days ago.’

  ‘They’ll start again once we’ve made an arrest.’

  ‘You got someone in mind?’ Phyllis obviously lacked social skills, her eyes darted around the room as though searching for neglected dust, not sure if the room was fit for visitors.

  ‘We’re working on it.’ Laura sounded confident, like a poker player with a full house, aces on kings. ‘Just don’t want you worried, that’s all.’

  This triggered a response. Phyllis seemed to draw back a little and her eyes became more wary. ‘Should I be worried?’ A mite out of breath.

  ‘Well, just thought you might be. Doris Butler had some unpleasant visitors, we hear.’

  ‘She had some pleasant ones as well.’ For the first time, Phyllis Carter gave a hint of humour, a tiny smile crossing her lips like a neon sign lighting up. Just for a second Laura saw it, then it was gone.

  ‘You saw some fanciable ones then?’

  Phyllis gave a swift shake of the head. ‘I’m a happily married woman, Miss Cotter.’

  ‘Possibly, but you can still think, can’t you?’

  No reply.

  ‘Particularly when your hubby’s away at sea in these dangerous days.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Not an unqualified agreement, in fact not an agreement at all.

  ‘You’ve told us some names already…’

  ‘Two names, and one of them uncertain.’

  ‘Had any more thoughts?’

  ‘No. None. I seen quite a few blokes but never recognised them.’

  ‘And Mrs Butler…? You say you borrowed some chairs from her when your hubby was on leave. Did she stay friendly?’

  ‘Not really. A nod sometimes in passing. Doris was a strange girl; I doubt she’d even own to being at school with me.’

  ‘At school with you?’ That hadn’t come up before.

  ‘Oh, only at mixed infants. We were mixed infants, then still together at the C. of E. School for Girls.’ She stopped as if somehow she had said too much. Then she took an audible breath as though about to continue but nothing came of it.

  ‘You were friends as children?’ Laura asked.

  She didn’t reply immediately, then didn’t answer the question when she spoke, going off on a riff of her own (Laura thought in riffs, jazz-lover that she was, listening to Django Reinhardt on Jazz Club, old records from Le Hot Club de Paris; BBC Home & Forces Programme). ‘Doris was kind of a snob. Went on to Sheffield High, out at Broomhill, them wi’ the brown uniforms: got a scholarship.’ Another pause. Wait. ‘Problem with Doris, she married beneath herself.’ Looked up under her eyelashes. Count of around ten. ‘Rog Butler was a bit of an oik really. I reckon she only married him because her mum and dad didn’t want her to. She was just man mad, Doris. Didn’t matter who they were really as long as they’d got the equipment.’ She thought better of the last remark. ‘No, no, I shouldn’t say that, but she did have the reputation of being a little tart. No shortage of money though, her dad being a chemist. Had a shop in the centre. Her mum had been wi’ him in the shop that day, when the bombs began to fall.’

  Laura asked if she saw much of Doris after she went on to the grammar – Sheffield High School for Girls.

  ‘Used to see her on the bus sometimes. And out on a Saturday, buying war paint, powder and lipstick. Liked to tart herself up on the weekends.’

  ‘Special friends?’

  ‘She had a gang she used to go round with – Milly Hadrill – Millicent – Betty Cummin, didn’t know if she were coming or going, they used to say. Julia Archard, Georgina Howith, stuck up that one. That were Doris’s special friend, Georgie Howith. Went around like they were joined at the hip, never out of each other’s pockets.’ She smiled to herself and Laura had the feeling that Phyllis Carter didn’t have many people to talk to. Spent a lot of time with herself. ‘Look how they ended up, Doris in a three up, three down, with Roger Butler; and Georgie Howith now Georgina French. French, Summers and Landis, estate agents with a big place up Ecclesall. Could fit Doris’s house half a dozen times inside the French mansion, The Towers they call it. Showplace. I bet she didn’t give Doris a second thought once she got off wi’ Alistair French, though I’d like to know why he isn’t in the Forces: looks fit enough to me and that’s not a reserved occupation, estate agent.’

  ‘She still live there? Up Ecclesall?’

  Phyllis nodded. ‘Wi’ all the steel owners, yes. You won’t catch Georgie round Woolworths make-up counter of a Saturday afternoon these days, oh no.’

  ‘The Towers?’

  Phyllis gave a giggle, not particularly mirthful. ‘No, some people’s idea of a joke. No, I think it’s called Beeches, or Birches. Might as well be called Britches. That’s what Doris and Georgie were after most weekends.’

  ‘And you say she was clever, Doris?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But never really used it, except, perhaps, when she worked for the Army. The RTO at Victoria.’ The smile again.

  ‘Clever? How?’

  ‘I heard languages. They said she was good with foreign languages, but I wouldn’t know. Doris wouldn’t give me time of day even when she was still at school in her brown uniform.’

  The conversation went on for another ten minutes. Laura knew about girls like Doris, boys as well. She’d been at school with a brilliant boy, well, he’d been at King Arthur’s Grammar and she’d been at St Anne’s. Danny Timson, got the best results ever in his School Cert, all credits and distinctions. Went into the Navy and invalided out in ’43. Could’ve taken his pick of jobs, gone to Oxford or Cambridge or both. Went on the buses. Conductor. ‘No ambition,’ her father said. ‘No will to succeed. Head stuffed full of facts, nothing to back them up.’ She wondered if that was true or whether he was a fish out of water, uncomfortable out of his own class, because class mattered whatever people said.

  She untangled herself from Phyllis, told her to telephone the station if she had any problems, said she’d been a great help.

  Next on the list was Eileen Shanty: Fat Eileen, Pete Hill’s girl – Pete the electrician who favoured girls you could get hold of; Pete Hill, Roger Butler’s cousin looking out for Doris.

  And Eileen was certainly plump. You could have made three of Doris out of Fat Eileen.

  ‘Saw her at the St Giles’ dance that Saturday, Doris,’ Eileen told her, pleasing and smiling in spite of the excess flesh – had to be some thyroid disorder, Laura thought. But she was light on her feet and laughed a lot. ‘Yes, yes, Doris was often at the St Giles’ dance of a Saturday. Never brought Roger with her when he was home.’ Giggle. ‘Might’ve met too many boyfriends if she’d brought him. Bit leery, Doris. Though she did bring that lodger she had stayin’ wi’ her a few weeks before. Weren’t shy about him. No.’

  ‘What lodger?’ Laura asked. First time they’d heard of a lodger far as she knew, though the chief didn’t tell them all the good secrets.

  ‘He were wi’ the Poles, I think. Polish pilot or something, they said. Big bloke, always grinning and speaking fifteen to the dozen. Maybe not a pilot but definitely a Pole. Polish.’

  Well I never, Laura thought to herself, and went off to pin down Georgina French, Georgina Howith as was. But there was nobody home at The Laurals – as it turned out to be – except a crisp woman in a starched pinny who told her that Mrs French was out for the afternoon and wouldn’t be back until six or later.

  So Laura took herself back to the nick where Tommy had been in a high old temper that afternoon.

  * * *

  In the bundle of documents passed to Tommy Livermore under the heading ‘Doris Butler: Sheffield Murder Investigation’ were a series of reports by an eccentric detective constable named Horace Betteridge, known to his mates a
s Harry Betters.

  Betteridge spent many of his duty hours on obbo, skulking around likely places such as Sheffield’s Victoria Railway Station, St Giles’ Hall and other interesting locations near the centre of the city, dodging trams and keeping an eye out for the shady side of the local populace: people concerned with thieving, dealing in illicit food or clothes coupons, food itself and people involved in matters illegal running from homicide to whoring.

  He was a thin man, thirty years of age, five-eleven in his stocking feet, with a strange walk giving the impression that he was always negotiating steep stairs, even when he was on the flat. He also possessed a livid scar running straight across his forehead, the remnant of a collision with a large brick during an air raid in 1941. The brick had not survived; Betteridge had. Some said that his oddities dated from the impact of the brick. Sergeant Percival, one of the desk sergeants, had been heard to mutter in the vicinity of Harry Betteridge, ‘And some fell on stony ground.’

  Many of this young DC’s reports bordered on paranoia or fantasy, but there were times when he managed to drag interesting facts into the light of day. The three reports in the Butler file had been made during the weeks leading up to her demise.

  ‘I have known Doris Butler since she was Doris Haynes,’ he began the first report. ‘On the face of it she is a well-brought-up girl, but she appears to me to be a young woman of somewhat loose moral behaviour and it strikes me that when loose morals show themselves a life of near-criminal folly cannot be far behind. I was, therefore, not wholly surprised to see her, from time to time, in the company of men who were neither her husband, nor male relatives.’

  If Tommy had not known better he would have put Horace Betteridge down as a lay preacher attached to one of the nonconformist churches, or maybe a small extreme and strict religious sect. He was none of these things but, as Superintendent Berry often remarked, ‘Betteridge is a man who likes the sound of his own voice, particularly when he is making comments in writing.’ Mr Berry was not averse to mixing metaphors and, on this occasion, seemed to have done the mixing with a patent kitchen whisk.