A Commonplace Killing (7 page)

C
ooper was scarcely aware of her coming to stand at his side. He had no idea how long she had been standing there, patiently holding out a tray bearing a plate of sandwiches and, amidst an assortment of dirty crockery, an untouched cup of tea.

“I do hope fish-paste is acceptable, sir,” she said. “It was the nearest thing to a kipper I could find.” He wondered if she was making fun of him. If so, he didn’t mind. He tamped down his pipe with his thumb, slipped it back into his pocket and reached for a sandwich. A train passed below them, coating everything with thick grey smoke, softening the harsh glare of the sun. She coughed.

“This is hardly the place for a nice girl like you,” he said over the engine rattle.

She smiled slightly, expertly.

“I’d drink the tea while it’s still warm, sir, if I were you,” she said. “It’s been standing for a few minutes. You were terribly busy – I didn’t want to disturb you.” She was to be commended for her correctness, he supposed. He was long out of practice where women were concerned.

“You should have waited somewhere else,” he said. “I could have come and found you, you know. A murder scene – it’s – well, it’s not pleasant.”

He drank the tea down, washing away the sandwich, and when it was all gone he asked her if there was any chance of another.

“I’m sure there is,” she said. “The next-door neighbours are very obliging.”

He set down his cup on the tray, pleased when she didn’t leave immediately. He wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his handkerchief. She was looking at the ground, pensive; her face was slightly flushed, her tawny eyebrows knitted in consternation.

“You know,” she said at last, “I was in Nairobi with the ATS.” Then without another word, she turned sharply and picked her way across the rubble and the weed patches with her tray of dirty tea things, leaving him wondering what on earth he had said to upset her.

Lucas had come to stand at his shoulder, fanning himself with his hat.

“I’ve arranged for a conference at Cally Road, sir, nine tomorrow morning.”

Cooper thanked him. The DI ran the edge of his hand across his brow and shook a few drops of sweat on to the brown-tipped grass.

“Shall I let the body go now, sir?”

“Yes. Yes. I suppose we better had.”

“Is everything alright, sir?”

“Yes. Quite alright.” He sighed. “It’s been a long weekend.”

“You’re telling me.”

Cooper watched the stretcher-bearers lift the body, wrapped in a sheet, and carry it away. The next time he would see her would be in the morgue; the rest of the after-death routine was practical, tedious and best left to Lucas.

“Sir, I think you’d better take a look at this.”

Lucas was indicating the spot where, until a few moments before, the woman’s body had been lying, and pointing at the navy-blue raincoat that had been spread out upon the ground beneath her.

“If I’m not very much mistaken, that’s a man’s mackintosh,” he said.

Cooper came across and crouched beside the garment.

“Bag it up,” he said when he had seen enough to know. “I’ll take it back to divisional HQ with me and give it a damn good going over.”

For the first time that day there was a palpable energy to the murder scene. Lucas called across to Policewoman Tring, who was standing a short distance off bearing another tray laden with yet more cups of tea for the male officers.

“Girlie, get rid of that tray and take the guv’nor to Stoke Newington straightaway with the samples,” he barked, “and when you’ve done that get yourself back here as quick as you can. I need you to support the men on door-to-door inquiries.”

Cooper waved his hand dismissively.

“Oh no,” he said. “I don’t need a lift. Waste of petrol and manpower. I can make do with the Tube. Besides,” he risked a quick glance at her, “Policewoman Tring would be much better used here.”

Lucas brought his lips together shrewdly, the way he always did whenever he was about to countermand an order.

“Do you really think it’s wise to entrust important evidence to the Piccadilly Line, sir?” he asked.

They didn’t speak much on the drive back to Stoke Newington. The combination of heat and lack of sleep was beginning to get the better of him. He drooped against the side of the open window through which the warm air scarcely moved, thinking of sausages, mashed potatoes and fresh, not tinned, peas. When that became too tormenting he thought of Bach, St John Passion, of the night of sorrow measuring out its final hour, the woman lying in the morgue, the evil men do, the waste, the terrible bloody waste.

“DI Lucas and the other men are all saying that the chances of catching the killer are next to none,” she said, “and it’s a waste to put so much effort into the investigation.” She
swallowed
hard. “One of them described it as a commonplace killing. What’s commonplace about a man strangling a woman with his bare hands?”

He looked out of the window. We’ve just been through a war in which countless numbers perished, he thought; what’s one more corpse on a bomb-site?

“There are around half a dozen murders committed in London every year that are never solved. An apparently random killing is the hardest case of all to crack. We shall all do our best, of course; but we must be realistic.”

You had to keep reminding yourself that it mattered: the woman on the bomb-site mattered. They all mattered.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I think it’s bloody awful.” There was a pink tinge creeping up her neck. “You can’t have men getting away with killing women, even if some women do deserve it.”

He could not ignore the utter sincerity, the heart-rending quiver in her voice, the flush of genteel outrage.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, allowing it all to touch him, “I agree with you.”

She turned briefly from the road to glance at him, her green eyes shining with emotion.

This glorious creature, he thought, gazing upon her erect head, her purposeful expression now returned to the road ahead of them; and for a brief moment he was almost hopeful – almost – for the sort of future that she, and others like her, would strive to build with decency and hard work and a sense of justice. He hoped to God that they would not mess it up like his generation had done; and beyond the rattle of the motorcar, beyond the charred streets dusty in the brilliant sunlight, he began to discern the possibility of a world finally at peace.

Or rather, he corrected himself, a post-war world: not the same thing at all, old man. Not the same thing at all.

T
he dream was always the same: it didn’t seem to matter how much or how little he had had to drink. It always ended with him flying through the air with the feeling that the inside of his head had been blasted to smithereens and something, some vital part of him, was gone for ever. He never dreamed about hitting the water, floating for God knows how long in the frozen sea clinging to a hatch cover; he did not dream about drowning. He dreamed of flying, which to his mind was a strange thing for a sailor to do.

He had woken up late, still the worse for drink, and gone out to look for cigarettes. He had woken to the dream as he always did these days, and the memory of the dream had stayed with him, vivid, all the way along the Seven Sisters Road; more real to him than the rush and confusion of the street with its crowds of ugly, worn-out people; the bints wearing trousers and the skinny arses on them; the fumes and shrieks of the motor cars and buses.

He had no recollection of the night before, of how he had found his way back to his digs: none of it was as memorable to him as was the dream. The dream was so powerful, he often wondered if that was where he actually existed and it was
everything
else that was unreal. Of course he knew that this was crazy talk; and the navy doctor had thought so too: he’d tried to fob him off with nerve tonic, but he wasn’t having any of that. One time he’d tried to talk to his pal about it, but it was kind of hard to put into words: he didn’t want to look like a nut-case; better to keep that sort of thing to yourself. In the tobacconist’s he wondered if he had died and was a ghost. He wondered how you could tell for sure.

Kensitas or Weights: that was all that was available under the counter, unless you didn’t mind filthy Turkish which was all that you could get over the counter. He didn’t like Kensitas, so he bought ten Weights, which cost him the best part of two bob. He had heard that Jerry POWs got twenty-five cigs a week, which made you wonder what it had all been about. He went into the café next door to smoke over a cup of tea and a cheese roll. The cheese roll cost him tuppence and tasted faintly of rubber, but he was hungry and needed something to sop up all the alcohol from the night before. He ate it all in one go and ordered another. The waitress was an alright piece, even though she was cock-eyed. He winked at her when she brought him the roll, and smiled slowly as she turned her nose up at him, the snooty little cow. He reckoned he’d have been better off staying down in Portsmouth; at least the bints there knew how to treat a fellow who’d spent four years fighting for his country.

He’d sort of come to the conclusion that the navy suited him; leastways he’d seen enough of how it went on the outside to know that civvy street was not for him. Funny thing: he’d been low priority for demob, seeing as he didn’t have dependents and his injuries didn’t seem to count, and he’d spent months marking off the days – a lot of them spent in the stockade – but now that he had been demobbed it seemed as if he spent all his time wondering whether he ought to join up again. There were times when he felt like leaving the navy had been a sort of betrayal, which was pretty funny when you thought about it.

He knocked the ash of his cigarette into his saucer and smoked without interruption until the rest of it had gone. Then he stuck another cigarette in the corner of his mouth and called over to the waitress for more tea. He wanted to see if she was going to look at him again as if he was dirt. The snooty little cow did not disappoint. He curled his top lip and struck a match on the table-top, his eyes watering against the whiff of sulphur as he held it up to the cig.

He wondered whether, if he was to go to another part of London, he might like it better. He sure hated Holloway, but a pal of his had a room in Finsbury Park and rooms were hard to come by, so he reckoned he’d been lucky there. The house was opposite the park in a crumbling terrace that was subsiding because of the bombing. The room smelled of damp, and was up a set of rickety stairs covered in a seasick-green carpet. It reminded him of being on a ship. There were three rooms to a landing and an outdoor lav, and it was twenty-two bob a week, which was a fucking liberty seeing as the place was such a dump. He and his pal split it, even though his pal was still in the navy and only there one weekend in three. Still, it suited them. They had a system if one of them got his hooks on a bint, not that this happened for him all that often.

He drank his tea and smoked. He caught the waitress looking at him a couple of times, but he wasn’t bothered one way or the other. He could have had her if he put his mind to it; maybe he would. He was a good-looking fellah. He took trouble with his appearance. The jacket, in particular, he was very pleased with. He had a sweet little number going on, and as a matter of fact, he was thinking of pulling off another little caper that very afternoon. He was a bit short, and his pal had gone to Brighton with a girl. He had enough left over for a few cigs and drinks, but not much more. He had plans to take the Tube down to King’s Cross so’s he could pinch another suitcase. His system was simple: he simply waited for the porter to turn his back and then helped himself to whatever was on top of the trolley. The luggage was being forwarded, so nobody was keeping much of an eye on it. A few weeks before he’d picked up a brand-new grey pinhead suit which must have cost at least two guineas; another time he’d got a gold enamel powder compact and a pair of nylons. If the waitress played her cards right he might let her have them. He also had a set of silver egg spoons which he had plans for. There was a woman in his lodgings, a horrible fat old whore, who ran a coupon racket. She charged a couple of bob a piece for them, but he reckoned she’d let him have some in exchange for the egg spoons. He laughed lightly to himself at the thought of the fat old whore. The coppers thought all
racketeers
were the same and looked out for blokes with thin ’taches, long jackets, wide-cut trousers. The police were mugs. The fat old whore had worked more coupons than half the spivs in London put together. With a few of them coupons he could get the little cock-eyed waitress to go with him alright; not that he needed coupons to get a tart, but it all helped. You’d think that spending four years serving your country would entitle you, but it didn’t seem to: matelots didn’t get any more of anything – coupons, bints – than anyone else.

He finished his tea and asked for a coffee, and the
waitress
did that half-shrug thing girls do when they like the look of you but don’t want you to know it. He yawned, bored with it already; bored with everything. He thought he might take himself up west so’s he could buy one of those hats with Jimmy Cagney’s autograph on the sweatband, but no sooner had he thought it than he knew it was unlikely that he would do it; he had already decided at some point that he’d end up sitting in the café, smoking, drinking tea and coffee, eating rubbery cheese rolls, until it was time to go back to the room and get ready for the pubs to open. The thing of it was this: since the war he had occupied a vacant space, going through each day and from one day to the next sitting about in cafés waiting for pubs to open; then sitting about in pubs getting lit up. His was a pointless bloody existence: a curse to him. A fucking curse. Maybe tomorrow, which was Sunday when the pubs and cafés were all shut, maybe then he’d go to King’s Cross and pinch a suitcase, but other than that he had no particular ambition. It had all been blown out of him when he was sent flying through the air.

He scowled at the cigarette he was smoking and told himself that it was fucking London that was doing this to him: its sordidness, mapped out in pubs and cafés all stinking of grease and toilets. He suffered an overwhelming confusion in the noise of the shopping streets, in the hell of the buses and the crowds of people. No sooner had he come off the train at Waterloo than he was sorry he’d listened to his pal; sorry he’d come. Sorry he hadn’t stayed in Portsmouth. He was sorry for a lot of things. The bloke at the Resettlement Office had told him how he had to start planning for the rest of his life; how he’d come through a tremendous ordeal; how he needed to get some training so’s he could get a job. Jobs were hard to come by. You needed skills. You needed certificates. It wasn’t enough for you to have spent four bloody years fighting for your country and having parts blown out of you, parts of you that you needed. It all made him want to fucking spit. Not that he was one of those commies who spend their time on the wireless and in the newspapers going on about building a future where everyone was more equal. He didn’t have any time for that. He
imagined
that to be a commie you had to care about the future, and he didn’t give a shit: it had taken him four years to reckon he didn’t have one, and now here he was waiting for the pubs to open and maybe tomorrow he’d take a train ride and pick out a nice piece of luggage for himself, and how was that for making the world a more equal place? He kept his sailor’s uniform clean and pressed, ready for when he was needed again.

He stretched his legs out under the table, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling and wondering how it would have been for him if he’d never lost whatever it was, if he’d stayed like he’d been before. He had flown through the air. He had seen the sea on fire.

It made you think. It really did.

The waitress brought his coffee, and slopped it down on the table in front of him. He fixed her with a cool appraising look, up and down, the whole length of her body. She had a squint, but her figure wasn’t half bad. Not bad at all. She looked back at him, their eyes locking briefly. It was enough. He leaned back in the chair until he had lifted the front legs clean off the ground, laughing lightly; smoking.