A Commonplace Killing (11 page)

I
t got on her nerves the way Evelyn had to flirt with every man who gave her the time of day. She’d had words with her about it before now: how it looked common, cheap; how no man likes a woman to be too obvious.

The kid was chatting away with the young man in the
swingback
jacket and the vulgar woman as if they had known each other all their lives. He looked as if he had come by money in all the ways that had proliferated since the War, and Evelyn was making no attempt to conceal the fact that she was after some of it.

“Oh Dennis,” she screeched with laughter, waving her hand at him, “what a thing to say. Isn’t he terrible, Lil? Eh, Nesta? Isn’t he a one? Oh, don’t! Don’t!”

She had her long skinny brown legs up on a chair, and kept smoothing her skirt down over her knees in a way calculated to draw attention to them; she threw her head back to laugh at everything he said; she was wafting a cigarette around her, enveloped in hazy blue. Evelyn would do anything for a cigarette.

Dennis had ordered more teas and coffees for them, slices of white bread and margarine, fruit cake. The cross-eyed waitress had almost thrown it at them, before going back to the counter, where she stood huffing and sighing, fanning herself with one of the little card menus. The stout man standing by the urn remained oblivious to it all, engrossed in his sporting paper, pausing only to lick his thumb and forefinger every so often, in order to turn the page, slowly and with immense care.

The heat and the steam, Nesta and Evelyn shrieking with laughter, it all made her feel a little too queasy to “tuck in”, as Dennis put it. I must look a state, she thought. It was so hot, and she could feel the damp of her skin, like a layer beneath her clothes.

“Is that the time? I really ought to get going,” she said for the umpteenth time, nudging Evelyn. “I need to try and get a lettuce for our supper, dear.”

Evelyn and Nesta had brought their chairs in close around the table, and she was boxed into a corner, so it was difficult to leave without drawing attention to herself. And then every now and again Dennis would cast a wolf-whistle look in her
direction
. He had also taken to rolling his eyes at her whenever Nesta said anything, and she had begun to make little gestures of complicity back towards him: a knowing raise of the eyebrows, a half-smile, a slight shrug of the shoulders. She couldn’t deny that she was flattered by his attention – he was young enough to be her son – and it gratified her to think that he preferred her, in some way, to Evelyn, and perhaps the cross-eyed waitress, too, even though she was old enough to be their mother. If I leave, she thought, there’s no knowing what will happen. Certainly, Evelyn would not leave – not where there was a nice-looking man handing out free cigarettes; she needed to keep an eye on the kid, who did not have the common sense and experience to deal with a man who was so obviously out to pick up a woman.

“Tuck in, blondie,” Dennis was saying. “Get some of that fruit cake down you.”

She smiled and patted at the back of her head, wondering what it would be like to find herself upstairs on a bus with him, letting him stroke her leg as far up as she dared, him talking a lot of rot as he made little grabs at her waist and tried to kiss her. Not that she was as bothered with that sort of nonsense as she had once been. Marriage to Wally and then the war had rid her of any traces of sentimentality she might once have had with regard to men; but she still liked the attention. And so she remained in the dreadful café, with Evelyn’s legs, and Nesta’s cackle, and the plate of bread and marge, all making her feel ill.

“Ooh! Sauce!” shrieked Evelyn. “Are you making
suggestions
? Is he trying to carry on? Is he?”

Nesta choked on her own laughter.

“We should all go on somewhere,” she said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Yes,” said Evelyn, “we couldn’t half do with cheering up, couldn’t we, Lil?”

He was looking back at her, his lips wrapped around a
cigarette
which he was lighting with a good-quality lighter. He lifted his top lip in a sort of half-smile, half-sneer.

“I’m not in the habit of going to public houses,” she said.

Evelyn looked as if she was about to say something, but then thought better of it.

“We could go to the flicks,” she said. “You like the flicks, don’t you, Lil?”

“I’ve already seen the big picture that’s on at the Mayfair,” she said. “I went on Wednesday. It wasn’t very good.”

“Empire, then. You often go to the Empire on a Saturday.”

She sniffed. “Last time I went the bill was very poor – a plump girl singer with lank hair and a very vulgar comic.” This was true, although she omitted to tell them how a man in the row behind her had struck up a conversation when his hat rolled
underneath
her seat. He had a strong chin and a thin moustache like William Powell’s; he was dressed in a suit and co-respondent shoes like Max Miller’s. She had taken out her compact several times during the first half, using it to simultaneously conceal and signal her interest in him, watching his reflection watching her. In the interval she had discreetly followed him to the bar (she had fancied a gin but there wasn’t any, which was just as well as she never bought her own drinks), but when she saw him chatting to the cigarette girl she had lost her enthusiasm for flirting.

She thought now of taking out her cigarette case, knowing that if Dennis saw her with it he would reach across and light her.

“There’s gin at the Feathers,” said Nesta.

“Gin,” Dennis said. “You and your bloody gin. It’s all you think about.”

This made Evelyn shriek. “You and your bloody gin! What is he like? I ask you! You ain’t half a one, Dennis! In’ he a one, Lil!”

He casually removed the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and blew a steady stream of smoke into the air above their heads. He did all of this without taking his eyes off her, and for a moment it was as if everything ran in slow motion, and only the two of them were solid and real. She wondered if he could get nylons and vanishing cream and French girdles without coupons. Perhaps he would take her off somewhere. Dinner and dancing, somewhere smart, like Mirabelle’s where the film stars went. Some of these spivs were earning two or three thousand pounds in a single week: he probably had access to all sorts of nice places and preferential treatment. She
imagined
herself drinking champagne in a nightclub while Dennis lit two cigarettes, one for her and one for him – those Russian ones, with the coloured paper tube to them – like Paul Henreid in
Now Voyager
.

“I haven’t seen the picture at the Odeon,” she murmured, casting him a sidelong glance. She wasn’t sure if he had heard her because Nesta and Evelyn were making such a racket; and maybe it was just as well that he hadn’t. She imagined him making love to her, telling her over and over again that he could not believe that she was forty-three and the mother of a
seventeen
-year-old son.

H
e supposed that the trip to Hendon with Policewoman Tring (he had yet to discover her first name) could have gone a little better, and that it hadn’t been entirely down to his being a damn fool. He was naturally a cautious man, but Hendon was almost the countryside; as they sped from the bomb-sites, unrelenting grey succumbed to green fields, trees flitted past the car window; the sky above an unbroken, solid bank of blue. All of this was enough to put even the most circumspect man off his guard. He was the sort of man who demanded more of a relationship than mere bodily stimulation (although it could not be denied that Policewoman Tring was jolly good-looking); and the older he grew the more he hankered after something essentially amiable and decent: a sharing of common
interests
, mutual respect. She was a good deal younger than he was, but not by so much that they would have nothing whatever in common. By the time she was fifty he would be in his sixties and the gap between them would have been breached fairly
satisfactorily
. He always found it difficult to think about the future. He closed his eyes for a moment and told himself that there had been enough past.

“Here you are in the middle of a dreadful crime wave,” she was saying when he came to. He had dozed off for a moment or two, lulled by the warm air passing through the open window and the hum of the motor. “You have nowhere near enough decent officers to help you, and now you’re stuck with this awful murder. And here am I, sir. Now, I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I’m bright, efficient, hard-working, and I can do a damn sight more than drive a car and make the tea.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said.

“I was a section leader in the ATS.”

“That’s very impressive,” he replied, realising, too late, that she probably thought he was being condescending. She shifted in her seat as she changed gear with undeniable force, and remained silent for the rest of the journey to Hendon. They walked mutely into the laboratory, carrying the bags of evidence between them.

He reckoned that the chap from the lab was in his early
thirties
, and rather good-looking in that boyish, eager way that many academic sorts convey. He was lean, with large
intelligent
eyes and dark hair that flopped across his brow so that he had to keep sweeping it back. Cooper noted the slight smile which passed across the boy’s thin lips on being introduced to Policewoman Tring; and he noted the unabashed grin which she proffered in return. The lab rat was Doctor somebody or other: women loved doctors. They made better husbands than policemen.

“I would love a cup of tea,” he said to Policewoman Tring. “The journey has left me rather dry.” He knew she was angry with him, and he felt a bit of a heel knowing damn well that he was despatching her in part because he didn’t want her making eyes at the scientist (the slight look of disappointment that crossed the young man’s face had not escaped his attention). However, it was the case that he would always have acted thus given the situation: the sort of conversation he was about to have was not one to which a young woman ought to be party.

“The pathologist,” he told the chap from the laboratory, as they pored over the samples, “is of the opinion that this was not a straightforward case of assault.”

“Jolly good. I like things to be out of the ordinary.”

Cooper bristled openly at the bright and breezy manner in which this was said.

“Yes, well. The pathologist is of the opinion that whereas intimacy almost certainly took place shortly before death, it was evidently consensual.”

“Tut tut.”

Cooper’s expression was set very stern; he was beginning to dislike the young man and could not imagine that Policewoman Tring would care for the cavalier manner in which he approached such a serious business.

“Something that has been puzzling me…” he continued,
satisfied
that he had conveyed his disapproval sufficiently. “She was lying on the mackintosh. It’s rather good quality. I’m assuming it belongs to the murderer.”

The lab rat inspected the garment cursorily.

“Mmm. It’s possible that the semen stains might yield a blood type,” he said. “And with a bit of luck it won’t be a common one.”

Cooper, who had become acutely conscious of Policewoman Tring, who was standing a few feet behind him bearing a cup of tea, nodded abruptly in an effort to move the conversation on from bodily fluids.

“Her clothing had been tampered with, but wasn’t torn,” he said, “and she appears to have removed her own under things.”

The scientist whistled.

“Quite a gal, eh!”

Cooper, who did not appreciate gallows humour and, unusually for a detective, had never shared an unsavoury joke with a pathologist over a dissected corpse, frowned. The horror was there: it was the one sure thing in life. Why try and dissipate it with an off-colour observation? The young man took the hint, shrugging carelessly.

“We’ll send the grasses over to Nottingham for analysis,” he said. “Should have something back in a week or two, with a bit of luck. We’ll look at the brick dust here.”

“There’s a green fibre,” said Cooper. “It looks like tweed or something. It was underneath her fingernails.”

The boffin brightened considerably.

“Okey dokey,” he said. “Now you’re talking!” He winked at Policewoman Tring. “I’m part of a team here engaged upon a taxonomy of woollen materials…”

How pleasant, Cooper thought sourly, to deal only with certainties.

“Really?” Policewoman Tring said coolly. “That must be so interesting.” He could have kissed her there and then.

Once all the samples had been handed over and signed for, Cooper and Policewoman Tring made their way to the front desk, where he telephoned Lucas, waiting an unconscionably long time for someone to pick up at the other end.

“He’s on inquiries, sir,” the desk sergeant at Caledonian Road said.

“Of course he is,” said Cooper. “Out on inquiries” covered a multitude of sins. “Tell him I’ll call back in an hour.”

He held open the heavy wooden door for her, thinking, as she passed through, how very graceful she was, even in the ghastly flat black shoes. He permitted his eyes to run over the gentle slopes of her waist and hips: he was only human, after all.

“What a very arrogant fellow he was,” she said as they crossed towards the car. “It’s hardly a matter for ribaldry, is it? I thought you were very good the way you dealt with him.”

“These scientific chaps can be very cavalier – pathologists are the worst.” He was relieved that she appeared to have forgiven him for whatever it was he had said or done to annoy her.

“Sir,” she asked, “isn’t it unusual for a woman to be strangled without being raped?”

He swallowed hard.

“Yes,” he said. “But it does happen. Men are brutes.”

“Not all men.”

“No. Not all men.” Just once in a while, he supposed, men and women must get together simply to talk: it didn’t always have to lead to the bedroom, or a lonely bomb-site.

They were at the motorcar when someone called him back.

“DDI Cooper?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a telephone call for you, sir. Caller says it’s urgent.”

He knew at once that it must be Lucas. He galloped up the steps two at a time and snatched up the receiver from the front desk.

The DI’s laconic tones, as usual, gave nothing away.

“Something’s turned up, sir.”

His first thought was that it was another body, hopefully in another division.

“A bloke’s just come into Holloway Road nick with an
identity
card belonging to a Mrs Lillian Frobisher. Says he found it on the hedge where we found the other items.”

Cooper raised a sceptical eyebrow.

“Do you believe him?”

“As a matter of fact I do, sir. I’m not saying his reasons for taking the card were entirely honest, but he says when he read about the murder in the newspaper he realised he might have found something significant.”

“Where’s the address on the card?”

“Holloway. About half a mile from the murder site. Three streets outside the house-to-house search zone.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have the card checked for fingerprints. Urgently,” Cooper said, knowing full well that Lucas would have already done this. “I’m on my way back to HQ. Call me there as soon as you know something.”

On the drive back to Stoke Newington she talked a good deal as, beyond the hum and rattle of the motor, the greens of fields and trees and hedgerows bled one into another until everything was indistinct: a smudge of green, with acres of sharp clear blue set above. Had he seen
The Captive Heart
? No? A pity; it was absolutely marvellous and she had thoroughly enjoyed it. He really ought to read
Titus Groan
; she had sat up all night to finish it, that’s how good it was. Did he like the ballet? Not really. No. She had thought she was going to die when she saw Fonteyn in
The Sleeping Beauty
. He leaned against the open window. No doubt she thought of him as some ancient Colonel Blimp type, issuing condemnations of trouser-wearing, cigar ette-smoking women and all other abominations of modern life from his Turkish bath.

It was difficult, in the warm breeze, to distinguish between contentment and exhaustion.

At Stoke Newington police station they parted company.

“You haven’t got rid of me yet, you know!” she said.

“No. I don’t suppose I have.”

“I shall keep badgering DI Lucas.”

“Yes, you do that. We could do with an extra pair of hands. ’Bye then.”

“Goodbye, sir.”

She smiled at him, saluting smartly. He stood on the
pavement
brushing a speck of imaginary dust from his hat and watched her drive away; then he went to his office and lit a pipe and smoked it while summarising twenty interviews with informants. He lit another pipe and drank a cup of tea and turned his attention to a pile of letters from well-meaning members of the public; all rot, of course, but to be responded to, promptly and courteously, nevertheless. He was just
considering
how pleasant it was to be distracted from an insoluble murder, when the telephone on his desk jangled into life. It was Lucas.

“It’s her. Lillian Frobisher.”

“Lillian Frobisher,” repeated Cooper.

“What do you want us to do, sir?”

Cooper checked his watch.

“Give it another hour or so,” he said. “We’ll go in after six o’clock, and see who’s at home.”