Daughters of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  ‘It most certainly did,’ he replies.

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘And is there anyone who worked here back then who is still …’ I begin. Then I stop and search my brain for some word slightly more tactful and sensitive than alive, ‘who is still living in the area?’ I continue.

  ‘I worked here,’ he says, and then, before I have time to ask him why he wasn’t in the army, he quickly adds, ‘I signed up, right at the start of the war, but I had poor eyesight and flat feet. The doctor told me he might just have passed me with one of them, but …’ He shrugs. ‘Anyway, if I couldn’t fight abroad, I was determined to do what I could on the home front to keep up morale, and that’s why we never closed, not even when all the streets around us were having the shit bombed out of them.’ He stops, and reddens. ‘Sorry about the language, miss.’

  ‘From the pictures I’ve seen, there’s no other word you could have used,’ I reassure him.

  He looks relieved. ‘Well, there you are then. We were just like the Windmill Theatre – we never closed.’

  ‘You should have got a medal,’ I say, ingratiatingly.

  ‘Get away with you,’ he says, embarrassed. ‘You don’t expect a medal for just doing your job.’

  I reach into my handbag and take out a card from the collection I store in there. This one says:

  Jennifer Redhead

  OXFORD MAIL

  ‘I’m doing a series on the Blitz,’ I say, ‘and my editor specially wanted me to include Bombay Street, because a relative of his lived there in 1944.’

  The landlord gives me a look which hangs somewhere between puzzlement and suspicion.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got the year right?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘And what’s your editor’s name?’

  ‘George Hobson. Why?’

  ‘The reason I’m asking is that Bombay Terrace – that’s the row of houses that ran most of the length of Bombay Street – was bombed out in 1941. There were only a couple of houses left standing by 1944, and only one of them had anybody living in it – and that was a woman called Jane.’

  ‘That’s her,’ I say.

  His look is now definitely more suspicion than surprise.

  ‘And she was a relative of your editor, was she?’ he asks.

  ‘A distant relative,’ I tell him. And, because I’m in danger of losing him, I decide to take a gamble, and add, ‘She was pretty much the black sheep of the family, if you want the truth.’

  He nods. ‘I can’t say I’m exactly surprised about that. She used to stand on the corner opposite the pub and sell herself to any man who had a few shillings in his pocket. This was when she was pregnant. It was really disgusting.’ And his disgust has been showing on his face, but now it melts away into a smile. ‘Then Grace came along.’

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘She was a real lady, was Grace. You’d have thought she had enough on her hands with her own pregnancy, but she decided to take Jane in hand. The first thing she did was to stop my customers giving Jane any money.’

  ‘And how did she do that?’

  ‘She threatened them with some kind of voodoo.’

  ‘And they believed it?’

  ‘Yes, she was very convincing – so convincing that every time they saw her after that, they put their hands in their pockets and checked that their balls were still there.’ The landlord blushes again. ‘Sorry, miss, I don’t know what’s got into me today.’

  ‘There’s no harm at all in a bit of plain speaking,’ I say. ‘What else did Grace do?’

  ‘She got Jane off drinking, and occasionally she’d come in here and make a collection for her. Most of my customers paid up, maybe because they were afraid of her, but mostly, I think, they did it because they were a little bit in love with her.’ He sighed. ‘I know I was.’

  ‘Did she stop coming once her own baby was born?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, but she sent a girl in her place. I can’t for the life of me remember her name.’

  Poor Annie Tobin, I think, so bloody diffident that she drifts through life leaving barely a trace of herself behind.

  ‘Grace was killed a few years back,’ the landlord says, with a hint of sadness. ‘They had a picture of her murderer in the paper.’

  ‘And did you recognize him?’ I ask, avoiding falling into the trap of seeming to know too much.

  ‘It wasn’t a him, it was a her,’ the landlord says. ‘And she did seem vaguely familiar, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.’ He takes a sip of his half of bitter. ‘Anyway, I was telling you about what happened in 1944.’

  ‘You were,’ I agree.

  ‘Grace started coming back about a month after her own baby was born, and that went on for three or four weeks. And then, of course, it happened.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The terrace was hit by a doodlebug. Do you know what that is, Miss?’

  ‘A V-1,’ I say. ‘A German flying bomb.’

  ‘That’s right, only we always called them doodlebugs – maybe because that made them sound less frightening. You could see them streaking through the sky, and people said that as long as you could hear the engine, you were safe. Anyway, this doodlebug hit what was left of Bombay Terrace, and it was gone. Boom! Just like that! Bricks and pieces of slate were flying everywhere. One of the bricks smashed through the window of the public bar, and we had to keep it boarded up until after the war, when there was fresh glass available. Anyway, the next day, when they were combing through the wreckage …’

  ‘Did you say the next day?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why did they leave it so long?’ I ask, horrified. ‘There could have been people lying injured under all that rubble.’

  The landlord shakes his head in a gesture that seems to signify both pity and contempt.

  ‘You youngsters,’ he says. ‘You’ve absolutely no idea what things were like during the war. For a start, if you’d seen the mess left behind after a flying bomb struck, it would never have occurred to you that anyone could have survived it. Secondly, you have to understand just how stretched our resources were. On the same day that the V-1 hit Bombay Terrace, a V-2 rocket hit the Woolworths store in New Cross, killing a hundred and sixty people and injuring over a hundred more. All those people, who’d just stepped out to do a bit of shopping, ended up dead or mutilated. Let me tell you, that was enough to keep the civil defence teams busy, and any bodies lying under the rubble in Bombay Terrace just had to wait.’

  ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t go making assumptions when I know nothing about how things were,’ I say, humbly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The landlord looks embarrassed for a second time. ‘No, girl, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that.’

  ‘They did clear the rubble eventually,’ I say, carefully.

  ‘They did,’ he agrees. ‘But Jane and her baby weren’t there, so they must have been out of the house when the bomb landed, which is a bit of a miracle in itself, because she hardly ever left home.’

  ‘So what happened to Jane after that?’

  The landlord shrugs. ‘We never saw her again.’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder about her?’

  ‘Not really. That was one of the things about wartime – people drifted into your life, and when you turned around again, they were gone.’

  Someone calls, ‘Hey, Jack, there’s no chance of a bit of liquid refreshment back here, is there?’

  ‘Coming right now,’ the landlord calls back. He turns to me. ‘Have you finished with your questions?’

  ‘I’ve just one more,’ I tell him. ‘What date did this flying bomb land on Bombay Terrace?’

  ‘It was sometime before Christmas 1944,’ he says, turning to go to his new customer. ‘I can’t be more precise than that. But if you look it up in the library, I expect you’ll find it easily enough.’

  Yes, I suspect I will. And I’ll be very surprised
if it wasn’t the 25th of November – the day before Annie Tobin’s birthday.

  Once I am back in the John Harvard Library, I test my theory on the date of the flying bomb by going directly to the 26th of November 1944 microfilm edition of the Southwark Record.

  And there it is – an extensive account of the V-2 which landed on the Woolworths store and killed so many people, and a second article, which is barely more than a footnote to the first, on the destruction of what little remained of Bombay Terrace.

  I am on the point of returning the microfilm to the stacks when another article catches my eye.

  The Mystery of the Burning Boat.

  Late last night, while PC Clive Turnbull was following his customary beat along Bankside, he noticed something on fire in the river. He soon ascertained that it was a rowing boat. It took him no time at all to call the Fire Brigade, and the Brigade responded with the speed and efficiency which has made us Londoners justly proud of it, but even so, by the time they arrived on the scene, the boat had sunk without trace in the middle of the river.

  The rowing boat belonged to Mr Harry Driver, a well-known local character who claims to be London’s last waterman. He talked exclusively to the Record. ‘I keep the boat moored on the river,’ he told us. ‘Everybody in the area knows it belongs to me. I don’t see why anybody would want to steal it, and even less why they would set it on fire. It seems a terrible shame.’

  We at the Record agree with you wholeheartedly, Harry. It is a terrible shame, and we cannot even imagine why anybody would want to do such a despicable thing.

  It could be a coincidence that the boat was set ablaze – for no apparent reason – on the same night that Grace Stockton arrived at her lodgings smelling of paraffin, but even if I hadn’t read some of Grace Stockton’s writings when I was an undergraduate, I wouldn’t have let it pass unchecked.

  I go back to the central library hall, and consult the book catalogue. The library has a copy of one of Grace’s books. It is called Anthropology for the Layman, and I’m almost certain it’s the one I dipped into all those years ago.

  I take it down from the shelves (it was purchased by the library eleven years ago, but there is only one stamp to show it was ever borrowed) and quickly find the relevant page.

  The Trinka culture of death seemingly has echoes in it of both the Zoroastrian culture of ancient Persia and the Viking culture of Scandinavia. Both the Zoroastrians and the Trinka revere the earth, and would consider it polluting (and actually sacrilegious) to bury their dead in the ground. It is here, however, that the belief systems diverge.

  Zoroastrians also worship the other elements – air, water and fire – and do not employ any of them in the disposal of their corpses. Instead, they build towers – known as Towers of Silence – on which they lay the bodies to be picked at and eventually devoured by carrion birds.

  The Trinka, on the other hand, worship river gods, who they believe would welcome the dead, and here we have an overlap with the Vikings. The bodies of the Trinka are placed in boats which are set on fire and then pushed adrift. Important Trinka personages – tribal chiefs and their wives, for example, are placed in elaborately carved war canoes, while more humble members (including children) are laid in much simpler craft, some of them barely river-worthy. However, the ceremony is essentially the same whatever the deceased’s position in society.

  The investigation is suddenly moving in ways I had not anticipated, and consequently there are new people I am more than eager to talk to. But it is far too late to set off in an entirely fresh direction today, I counsel myself, and my best plan would be to go home for the night.

  Once I am sitting on the train back to Oxford, I am surprised to discover that I am exhausted. How can that be, I wonder? I am a young woman – well, youngish, anyway, and though I may drink too many gin and tonics (which is, at the very least, debatable), I compensate for that by working out in the gym three times a week.

  The ticket collector, who is bow-legged and looks as if he is approaching retirement, inspects my ticket, clips it, and leaves me in peace.

  There is no reason in the world why a day’s investigating in London should leave me shagged out, I think. In fact, I should be ready and eager, once I’m back on home ground, to indulge in one of my favourite recreational activities, which is to hunt down a willing – and reasonably attractive – man and abandon myself to a night of wild, meaningless sex.

  I’ll be fine after five minutes’ rest, I tell myself, as the train pulls out of the station.

  The next thing I know, the ticket collector is shaking my shoulders.

  ‘Your ticket is to Oxford,’ he says.

  ‘Wake me up when we get there,’ I mumble.

  ‘We’re there now,’ he tells me. ‘And if you don’t get off the train soon, you’ll be going to Didcot.’

  And I wouldn’t want that, would I? I struggle to my feet, and get off the train just in time.

  My bike is parked – amongst hundreds of others – in the car park, but the thought of pedalling down the Iffley Road is just too much.

  I hail a taxi.

  Why not?

  I’m on expenses!

  Let’s live a little!

  PART FOUR

  Thursday 30th October, 1975

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It is morning. The birds are singing and the sun is shining. I should be feeling fresh and revitalized after my night’s sleep, but I don’t. I’m tired and listless and even the excited explosions coming from my cereal bowl (snap-crackle-pop, snap-crackle-pop) fail to make me feel any better.

  But at least I’ve worked out why I feel this way, I tell myself, as I sip my third black coffee of the morning. The problem is that I’ve done something I always promise I won’t do, which is to become personally involved in the case.

  I feel for Grace Stockton, who stayed in London out of a sense of duty when there would have been no shame in leaving, and who took Jane under her wing despite her own pregnancy.

  I feel for Jane herself, who, with Grace’s help, managed to turn her life around.

  And I feel for Annie Tobin, who only ever wanted to be helpful (and perhaps, if there was any to spare, a little love).

  All of them have done things that make me want to admire them, but it is unlikely that there was a happy ending for any of them, and I have this dread feeling – deep down in my gut – that one of them is going to let me down badly.

  I force myself through my toughest cycle of exercises, and then – with my muscles still aching – I make two phone calls. The first of these calls is to the police station in Southwark, and the second is to a private number that I’ve talked the desk sergeant into providing me with.

  That task completed, I decide that even though my body still hurts, I’ll walk all the way to the railway station.

  Sometimes, I’m a glutton for punishment.

  It is eleven thirty in the morning, and I’m back again in Southwark, sitting at a table in the lounge bar of a pub called the Green Dragon. I’m sipping at an orange juice, because it’s too early in the day (even by my flexible standards) to start hitting the hard stuff.

  The door opens, and a man steps inside. I assume he’s the one I’m waiting for, since he’s around the right age (late sixties), and, as I’ve been led to expect, drags his left leg slightly.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Hopalong Cassidy, Miss Redhead?’ he’d asked me over the phone.

  ‘Was he a television cowboy?’ I asked, dredging up distant memories from my childhood. Unbidden, another detail comes to me from the dark recesses of mind. ‘Didn’t he wear a black hat, whereas most heroes wore a white one?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Inspector Bannister chuckled delightedly. ‘Cassidy always was an unconventional righter of wrongs. That’s how I saw myself, too – an unconventional righter of wrongs – Hopalong Bannister!’

  I wave to him, and he acknowledges the wave with a slight nod of his head, then makes his way carefully over to my table.

>   ‘Miss Redhead?’ he asks.

  I stand up and hold out my hand. ‘DCI Bannister?’

  ‘Not any more,’ he says, shaking my hand and sitting down. ‘They tell me you used to be a copper yourself.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Were you any good?’

  ‘Yes. I was very good.’

  ‘So why did they make you resign?’

  I grin. ‘You’ve been checking up on me, haven’t you?’

  ‘I certainly have,’ he agrees.

  ‘You seem to have found out a great deal about me in a very short time,’ I say.

  He smiles. ‘Like you, I was very good at my job – and I wanted to know exactly who I was dealing with. So why did they make you resign?’

  ‘I was carrying out my own investigation into a high-ranking member of the Thames Valley police. It made him feel very uncomfortable.’

  ‘Bent, was he?’

  ‘As a corkscrew.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘He’s behind bars. They finally caught up with him last year.’

  Bannister smiles again. ‘I do like a story with a happy ending,’ he says. He slaps the table top with the palm of his hand. ‘Right, now that we’ve established that we like each other, and, more importantly, we trust each other …’ He pauses, and a look of mock concern crosses his face. ‘We do like each other and trust each other, don’t we?’

  ‘Definitely,’ I say – and I mean it.

  ‘Then let’s get down to business,’ he suggests.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And the first order of business is for you to call the waiter and get me a rum and peppermint.’

  When the waiter brings his drink, Bannister licks his lips and then takes a sip. ‘I used to look down on rum and pep as an old man’s drink,’ he says, ‘but somehow, when I wasn’t looking, I became an old man myself, and now it really hits the spot.’ He takes another sip. ‘So you want to hear about the case of the burning rowing boat, do you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I think I might know who set it on fire.’