'That's right.'
The Superintendent studied him for a moment. 'I can't give you much longer.'
'I didn't want to take up your time,' Billy Shanks said blankly. A loose agitation passed through his long frame as if sketching an intention to rise.
'We've got the other half of the package on this one,' Standers went on as if following a line of thought uninterrupted. 'Not the whore. The customer.'
Despite himself, Billy felt a renewal of interest. His quick mind pulled an idea from the air. 'You mean it might be someone who had it in not for the prostitutes but for their clients?' He saw it all at once like a pattern shaken into place. 'A woman who hated what men did to women, the way men exploit them.' He laughed out of pleasure at its neatness. 'A twentieth-century crime just as the Ripper's belonged so well to the nineteenth. Women's lib instead of Victorian exploitation and hypocrisy.'
Standers stared at him. 'A woman? No way a woman could have killed him. Oh, he was with a woman all right – I'd bet on that. But it was the pimp that killed him.'
Billy Shank deflated. 'The pimp...'
'Stands to reason. A quarrel about money, oh, a nutter as well. I'm not saying he wouldn't be a nutter – those cuts on the body are a bit, funny. I'm going to put the squeeze on everybody on the game in Moirhill. Somebody'll talk for peace and quiet.'
'They're not great talkers.'
'Too much pressure is bad for business. Somebody'll drop a whisper.'
'Unless,' Shanks muttered out of his concealed irritation, 'the killer frightens them more than you do.' 'You wouldn't care to give me a name?'
'There are some frighteners round here,' Shanks said uncomfortably. 'You'd know them better than me.'
'I'm always willing to listen. I haven't been on this patch long,' Standers said complacently, 'but I listen. I'll give you a name. I keep hearing about a man called Kujavia – '
Shanks' two long arms flew up of their own volition, wig-wagging distress. 'Not from me. You haven't heard of him from me.'
'He frightens you,' Standers said with satisfaction. 'I've heard he's good at that. It's his speciality. Only he overdoes it. I've been told that. Once particularly – he overdid it and killed a woman. Only a brass – but he got away with it and that's...' He made a face. It was plain they handled things better in the country.
To Billy Shanks it seemed that the Superintendent, who was new to the city, was too fond of the sound of his own voice. To get away from the subject of Kujavia rather than because he cared, he wondered aloud, 'Will frightening the girls work? I seem to remember that when Peter Sutcliffe was murdering one a month round Yorkshire, the red -light districts in Leeds and Bradford and the rest were still in business. The girls worked in the afternoon or out of the clubs at night. Most of them have some bread-and-butter regulars they can count on.'
'It worked in the Robertson case,' Standers said. 'This place was swarming with so many policemen somebody talked. It was bad for trade.' 'That was the big one. By the time it finished, men were being transferred in from all over the Region...'
'I'll frighten away the customers,' Standers said. He patted a meaty hand on the folded newspaper. 'Suppose the idea got about that somebody was topping the clients? Like you were saying a minute ago... It's even better. If they thought it was a whore doing it – who could a man trust? It would put the notion of getting on the job out of your head.' And he smiled like a man sharing a joke.
At last it seemed to Billy Shanks that he saw the light. 'That's the line you want me to take in the column? That the murder was done by a woman, and that it might happen again.'
Standers shook his head. 'I'm not telling you to say anything. You know I don't think a woman did it. But if – for the sake of argument – you took that line, well, it would help to keep the customers away. Keep them away and somebody might drop a hint. And if the brass who was there when the victim died gets it into her head it's her we're after... that's pressure too, isn't it? She comes to us to cover her own back – or he starts worrying in case she does. It's all pressure.'
'It's some idea,' Billy Shanks said, keeping his tone carefully neutral. 'I'll think about it.'
Standing up, the Superintendent looked more impressive, a heavy, fleshy man with the big frame inherited from generations of agricultural labourers. He laid a hand on Billy's shoulder as he walked him to the door. 'Remember,' he said, 'I'm not telling you to say anything.'
From the hall, an echoing bustle filled the room suddenly carrying with it, pervasive and unforgettable, that stinging smell of corruption and poverty Billy Shanks had thought belonged to the past.
'The window was down,' Murray said, 'so I got in to wait for you.' He had explained why Standers had called him in, and now he was explaining how he had got into the car.
'I put it down because of the heat,' Shanks said.
The sun beat on the roof of the car and there was no wind to stir the litter scattered across what would once have been the children's playground. A shirt-sleeved detective standing on the school steps stretched and, yawning, looked across the yard to where they were parked.
Murray eased one buttock off the clinging warmth of the plastic seat. 'I wouldn't mind if you wanted to drive away.'
'Jesus!' Shanks said, giving no sign of reaching for the key. 'That was the headmaster's room. I've stood in front of that desk as a kid. I got the belt there plenty of times. I was too tall; it was easy to pick me out.' He scowled. 'Pressure! Did I tell you what he said about “pressure”? Clown! He's a clown.'
'You told me. He thinks it's going to be another Robertson case. He wants you to make him famous, Billy.'
'And what do you want, Murray?'
'A lift into town – when you're ready.'
'Now you're in a hurry,' Shanks said. 'You sat and waited till I came out, you sat and listened while I shot my mouth off, now you're in a hurry. There's something about this story... Peerse and you. Why are you interested in it?'
'Peerse can't be involved with it. He's not free. He's –' Murray stopped abruptly. Targetting Blair Heathers, he had been going to say. And John Merchant... and my brother. It must be the heat, he thought; I've been sitting too long here in the heat.
'He's what?'
'Can we go? I'm too dry to spit.'
'Don't bet Peerse won't get in on the act. If that clown is right and this did get to be a big case, Peerse will get in on it somehow – like a blowfly round shite.'
'Big case, big deal. Somebody killed in Moirhill – big deal. Nobody's going to care. You don't care, Billy. Whatever you told Standers, you're not going to write about it again in your column.'
'Probably not.' And at last, reaching forward, he turned the key and brought the car to life. 'Unless...'
Murray had to wait while the yellow Datsun spasmed across the yard and rushed on the gate, narrowly missing the stone pillar on the left. Taking a breath, he prodded, 'Unless?'
Billy Shanks swung into the turn. 'Unless it happens again,' he cried. 'And if it happened on the right date – magic!' He jolted into top gear. 'Then it would be big.'
He glanced to the side, but for some reason Murray had turned away and there was no way of telling what he thought about that.
8 Visiting Mother
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2ND 1988
'Mum Wilson,' Irene called her, which never sounded entirely appropriate. Not that the old lady though born in the first years of the century on an island in the grey heaving Atlantic among a Sabbatarian people – huddled gaunt into a black shawl. If there had been any possibility of that, it had died with her husband. His death was a junction at which her life had taken a different road; so that, for example, as a change representative of all the others, she had not crossed the threshold of a church since that time. Altogether, with her good complexion and upright carriage, in a dress of light colours, she made of old age a reassuringly modern icon. Yet one still somehow unsuited to being called 'Mum Wilson' in Irene's light clear tone. Perhaps for no better reason th
an that her sons called her Mother. Perhaps because Irene never called her just Mum; it was always in full 'Mum Wilson'. To an unreasonable extent it got on Murray's nerves.
'Mum Wilson, as usual we apologise.' Her voice rang through the tiny flat. 'Or I apologise for him. He didn't want to be hurried this morning. Sunday's his day for lying in bed and worrying.'
'Worrying?' The old lady fixed her gaze on her younger son. Her eyes were extraordinary, being palest blue against her brown skin and the nested wrinkles of age. They had the milky appearance of the near blind, but in reality her vision was perfectly good. Against this, as she aged, she had become increasingly deaf. By habit, voices were raised in her presence. 'What is it? What's wrong?' And her tone had sharpened with an anxiety that was instant, apprehensive and hovering.
'Not a thing, Mother.' Malcolm brushed a kiss against her cheek, and went through into the sitting room assuring her over his shoulder, 'Everything's fine.'
'What did you say?'
'He says everything's fine, Mother,' Murray said raising his voice, before dropping it again to ask, 'Why do you do that? You know she can't hear you if you walk away from her.'
'What is it?' Mother asked him. 'How can I hear what Malcolm's saying if you keep talking?'
'Look at Malcolm,' Irene cried into the silence. 'You can see how well he's looking, Mum Wilson.'
'No,' the old woman said. 'He's not.'
She stared at her son who had spent a lot of time outdoors in this good summer; the paleness slid behind his tan made him yellow. He had the look of a man who has slept badly.
'Don't fuss, Mother,' he said irritably, and then to Irene more quietly, 'Don't you think I've had enough?'
'Speak so Mother can hear,' Murray burst out. At which all three turned to look at him.
'What is it?' Mother asked. 'What are you keeping from me?' It was the start of a Sunday visit familiar to them. The table had been opened out and set for dinner since midday. Now, two hours later, Malcolm and Irene had arrived. There had been plenty of time while they waited for Murray to listen to his mother's concern over whether Malcolm was well, happy, untroubled. Meticulously, she did not relate any of these speculations to Malcolm's wife. Since her younger son's marriage two years earlier, she had, after the first shock, come to terms with Irene for her own reasons. Mostly that day she had fretted over his reason for missing the previous Sunday's visit.
'They don't come every week, Mother,' Murray had said. 'Even I don't manage every Sunday. Things happen.' She widened her strange blind-seeming eyes on him and said, 'No, he's been very faithful about coming. He doesn't often miss a Sunday now.'
'Not since he got married.'
'Irene keeps him up to the mark,' she said seriously. 'She's been good for him.'
For some reason, he covered his mouth with his hand. He felt the hard pressure of his teeth against the drawn tightness of flesh at the root of his thumb. Thinking of the reach of her ambition for her younger son, he said, 'Malcolm needed to marry a lady.'
'Irene?' His mother surprised him. 'You're the detective. I'm only an old woman. She is a good wife for Malcolm – he needs someone to give him a push, he's not as confident as he seems – but she isn't a lady. I wish she was.'
A memory had made him smile. 'Do you remember, years ago, when the plane crashed on Breagda? There was no one on the island – you had all left it long before and so though they searched it was weeks before they found him. He had been alone piloting his own plane. That seemed marvellous to me, to have your own plane, to be as rich as that. But I overheard you saying to my father, “oh, he was not one of the gentry. No. He was just an ordinary fellow”.’
'I know what I mean even if you can't see it,' Mother said. 'Behind all her airs, there's a common woman.'
Now they had come, she hurried them to the table. She kept the flat tidy and resented the woman whom the brothers paid to come in twice a week. She cooked for herself and enjoyed preparing these Sunday lunches. There was soup first and then sliced ham with peas, tomatoes, potato crisps of which she was fond. Malcolm had developed the habit of bringing a bottle of wine and he would open it and set it on the table, pouring a glass for his mother, Irene and himself. To Murray, who remembered an earlier time, his mother raising the wine glass to her lips, the slight flush that coloured her cheeks, gave him a sense of unreality. For Malcolm, born at the junction time of his father's death, it was different.
'Pull your chair in,' Mother said. She insisted on serving the meal herself. 'You've pushed your seat back, and I can't get past you.'
The soup had been eaten, and now she brought through their plates, the portions decided, there was no question of setting out bowls from which they could choose. She gave more to the men, and if one slice seemed sappier, more succulent, it might be that it went to her younger son. For herself, she was at an age when a little would satisfy her, but she expected each of their plates to be cleared.
'It's the piano,' Murray said, hitching his chair forward.
'I don't know why you keep it,' Malcolm said. 'There would be plenty of room if you got rid of it, Mother.'
Irene, however, was not to be diverted. 'I don't know why it should make you so angry,' she said, accepting her plate. 'Usually you like him; I've heard you laughing aloud while you read him.'
'It didn't make me angry,' Malcolm said. 'Angry, for God's sake!' His face had gone red. 'You asked me to read it – I read it. You're the one who's fascinated by it.'
Murray didn't have to ask; before Irene spoke, looking across the table at him and smiling, he knew. 'Did you read it yesterday, Murray? What that friend of yours wrote in his column?'
Mother rested her hand on Malcolm's shoulder. 'What friend is that, Murray?'
'Billy Shanks,' he told her, but without taking his eyes from the younger woman.
'Murray knows someone famous,' Irene said laughing. 'Yet I had never heard of him till I came here. He's famous here.'
'Famous!' Mother exclaimed in what sounded like contempt.
While her husband was alive, she had lived in isolated places. She had never acquired the habit of newspapers. Now she was addicted to television. Only someone who appeared on television could be famous.
'A man was killed,' Irene said. Sitting opposite, Murray saw a circle of light surrounding her. The sun had found a gap in a drifting sky of clouds, and struck into this room in the cliff wall of the high-rise to surround her with its dazzling brightness. Like an actor picked out upon a stage, she cried to them, 'He was found dead in Moirhill – near where Murray used to live – where he became friends with the famous Billy Shanks. Years ago. After you ran away from home, Murray – when you were only a boy, really.'
What was it John Merchant had said? – Anything I know about you, I learned from your brother.
Malcolm flushed a deeper red. 'It doesn't matter where he was found, does it?' he asked, avoiding Murray's glance. 'Who wants to talk about a murder? We're supposed to be having dinner, for God's sake!'
'According to Billy Shanks,' Irene said, raising her voice to be heard, 'it's exactly a hundred years ago since Jack the Ripper committed his first murder – that was in Whitechapel, you know – in London. It's exactly a hundred years ago –'
'It's not,' Malcolm said. 'If we must talk about it, at least get it right.'
Mother gave Murray, who had unconsciously eased his chair back again, a little tap so that he moved forward. She laid down her own plate and sat down. As she did so, Murray caught in her glance at Irene a shadow of confusion. It was like a premonition of the slackening and bewilderment of the mind which comes with senility. Despite her age, the possibility of such a thing for her had never occurred to him until that exact moment. 'I waited a long time for that piano,' she said inconsequentially.
It was Irene who responded. 'When did you buy it?' she asked. There was a silence which went on too long and then lengthened again as not one of them was quick-witted enough to fill it with an answer.
'Was it af
ter Malcolm's father died?' she wondered pleasantly. 'Yes, after,' the old lady said.
'Perhaps he wasn't fond of music?'
'None of us play the piano,' Murray heard himself say. 'What does it matter?'
'I wanted it for Malcolm,' Mother said.
'But when I got old enough to learn, I hated the lessons,' Malcolm said. Unexpectedly he smiled, as if the memory had put him into a better humour.
They talked then about other things. As Murray ate, he kept looking at his sister-in-law and glancing away. He would have been ashamed to have it seem he was envious of his brother. She had dark hair that shone; she must be very healthy, only the hair of the well and the young glistened like that; he wondered what it would feel like under his hand. He could hardly believe that she was sitting opposite him, or in her reason for being there. She was married to his brother, who had met her in London, where she had been a secretary, something like that. Malcolm had gone on holiday and had come back with her; then they were married. Her mother and father were dead. She had no relatives. It had not been convenient for any of her friends to come up for the wedding. He realised with a kind of shock that he knew nothing of her background, and yet it was his daily business to find out such things about strangers. Malcolm would know, he supposed. It did not seem possible that people could fall in love and marry without offering each other the past to share; yet he was not sure. He found that he was looking at her breasts, and when he raised his eyes she was smiling.
As Mother got up to fetch the next course, little bowls of sweet pudding, Irene said, 'Of course, Polly Nicholls – that was the name. I've been sitting trying to remember.'
'Let it rest,' Malcolm said.
'Something in Billy's column yesterday,' Murray guessed. 'The one Mother and I haven't read.'
'Clever.' Irene held out her hand to him across the table as if inviting him to touch her.
'Polly Nicholls...' It wasn't difficult to take the next step. 'The Ripper's first victim.'
'In Whitechapel a hundred years ago. A prostitute,' she said. 'And not glamorous at all. She was a tiny woman, and five of her front teeth had been knocked out in a fight. When they make a film of it, the women don't look anything like that.'
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