The Blood Royal (14 page)

‘Glad to hear it, sir.’ Her response was automatic, her mind elsewhere. ‘Look, sir – no woman would risk ruining her evening shoes and clothes in this wilderness in normal circumstances. She’d walk around on the path.’

‘Meeting someone? Hiding from someone? Lying in wait?’ Sandilands suggested.

Lily stood up again, an object clasped carefully between finger and thumb. ‘Long enough to smoke a cigarette, anyway. There’s lipstick on this. That suggests waiting about. Ambushing? Setting up a diversion?’

Joe produced a paper evidence bag from his pocket and held it open to receive the stub. ‘Not an enthusiastic smoker, evidently. Only a few puffs taken before she threw it away. Interrupted by the arrival of the taxi?’

‘Who do you know who smokes Balkan Sobranie, Holmes?’ Lily asked, laughing at him. She seemed to have been suddenly ambushed by their ridiculous situation.

He answered the question with a grimace: ‘Ah! If only it were so simple in real life. Balkan Sobranie, eh? You’re right. That would reduce our smoker to a select club of about ten thousand émigré Russians and as many Londoners who think it the smart thing to do. Anyone from a grand duchess who screws one into a six-inch-long Fabergé holder to the girlfriend of a Soho waiter who’s decided to have a flirt with the bohemian style.’ He sighed. ‘Still – worth recording and preserving. Perhaps Miss Hampshire will be able to throw a little light? I must check the plans Hopkirk has for re-interviewing that lady.’

‘We’re thinking the same thing, sir? On the same lines as Lady Dedham herself? She was convinced it was a third gun that fired the finishing shot from across the road. And we’re looking at evidence of a third party present at the scene.’

Joe nodded. ‘Yes. Interesting that in all the noise and horror Cassandra picked out a third gun. A killer still at large? I’ll tell you – while you two were upstairs, Hopkirk read out to me over the telephone the initial report from the autopsy. Dr Spilsbury had interesting things to say …’ He took out a notebook and found his place. ‘I give you the salient bits … Hit, in the first instance, by two bullets fired one from the left and one from the right at a distance of no more than six feet. One narrowly missed the lung and crossed the body to lodge in the muscle under his left arm, the other shot penetrated a lung and would, ultimately, have caused death. The
coup de grâce
was delivered from farther afield and from a higher-calibre gun. Something in the order of a Browning. In the hands of a marksman, I’m inferring from the doc’s comments. Clean shot through the heart. He was dead in seconds.

‘The first two shots came from guns identified as Webleys. As issued by the British army. Thousands of those about on the quiet in London. Old soldiers sometimes fail to turn their weapons in. Conveniently “lose” them. They get used to having protection to hand and can’t bear to give them up. Who am I to blame them – I have an illicit Luger at home myself.’

‘Have you any idea of the distance?’ Lily asked. ‘Of the lethal shot?’

‘Spilsbury’s estimate from an examination of the wound would place the gunman at the edge of the road, right where the taxi was parked.’

‘By someone standing behind and using the motor for cover? Inside it and firing from a window? Or someone at the wheel?’

‘As you say. I think we’ve finished here for the time being, Wentworth. Right – what do you fancy next? Shall I take you to view the wounded at the hospital? I can offer you the butler or the driver, though he was still unconscious when last I heard.’

‘No, sir. I’d really like to have a word with the prisoners, if you can arrange it.’

Joe was taken aback by the request. He looked up and down the street to gain time and his gaze returned to hover inches over her head as he replied doubtfully: ‘I don’t think I can sanction that. No. Not sure it’s a good idea. We’ll leave the interrogation to those who have the skills. Hard nuts these two boyos, according to Hopkirk. All they would offer at Gerard Street was false names. Sean O’Brian and Sean O’Hara if you can believe!’

‘John Smith and John Jones, in other words?’

‘Exactly. No address or comment can be wrung out of them. In view of their intransigence, Hopkirk had them carted off to the Vine Street nick where the officers are more used to dealing with such cases.’

He didn’t think he could make it clearer. Lily, according to her file, was attached to the Vine Street nick. She could hardly be unaware of their reputation. She appeared to select her next remark carefully, her voice controlled. ‘Didn’t you say one of them had a bullet – a .22 from Lady Dedham’s gun – lodged in his back? Wouldn’t one expect him to have been conveyed to hospital for treatment?’

‘A doctor was called in to attend, of course,’ Joe replied briefly, uneasy with the conversation. ‘Anyway, whatever their condition, these are not types a young thing like yourself would want to engage with at any level. I’ve seen them. Brutal killers. Products of the gutter. You’d hardly understand what they were saying anyhow. They’re refusing to speak in English. Leave these things to the experts, Wentworth.’

The constable glowered at him in a silence that rather smacked of contempt. He leaned slightly sideways to look under the brim of her hat. He straightened, snorting and sighing theatrically. ‘I had a cat once that could pull exactly the same face. It got its own way once too often and now features at third on the left in my mother’s pets’ cemetery. Come on then! But on your own head …’

As soon as they’d settled into the back of the squad car Joe began to murmur entertaining nonsense about Vine Street: the West End police station located in a side road off Piccadilly. Notorious to some members of the public, celebrated to others, the view of those receiving attention here was coloured by the seriousness of the charges brought. And by the class and attitude of the miscreant. Drunk and disorderly aristocrats hauled in on Boat Race night would relive their adventures for years to come. The carousing in the cells in the company of like-minded toffs, all caught at a hazardous moment in their wild night out in the capital, led to the formation of new friendships. Over fifty years a certain camaraderie had developed among those who could boast they had survived a night in custody at Vine Street. Over the port, moustached old warriors recounted with a glee equal to that with which they told the stories of their conquests the tale of their night in clink … ‘So there I was, pissed as a newt, caught making mating calls to Landseer’s south-easterly lion in Trafalgar Square … as one does … Thought I was being jolly smart giving my name as the Duke of Wellington, Number One, London, when they chucked me into a cell with – would you believe it? – Field Marshal Haig, Kaiser Bill, Alfred the Great and Jack the Ripper! Of course, next morning Justice Peabody showed his decent side. Let us all off for a fiver each. Except for Kaiser Bill who got charged a tenner for “demonstrating unpatriotic sympathies in his choice of nomenclature”.’

And, however deep the hangover, the wise and drily humorous reprimands of the Justice were always remembered and boringly trotted out verbatim after a passage of decades. One of Joe’s own uncles, he confided, had worked up a hilarious party piece concerning his own incarceration and release, one Ascot week.

The patient professionalism of the arresting officers as well as the understanding of the magistrate presented a comforting image of an England sadly passing and surely to be admired in these dark days, Joe was suggesting. He wondered at his emphasis. A bleaker version of the Vine Street ethos had reached his ears, though much detail was deliberately filtered out before reports were presented to the upper ranks. Unsure what awaited them, he thought it wise to draw a blind of good-hearted humour and irreverence over it for the moment.

The softening up continued as they sped down Piccadilly. Lily nodded and smiled and maintained a polite silence. Her own judgement of the station and its officers had been coloured by a closer experience and from the inside. She had admitted to no one that, on more than one occasion in her year on patrol, she’d held back from calling her colleague to arrest a suspect, out of pity and concern for the latter’s safety in what Sandilands seemed to want to present as a jolly gentlemen’s club. The young, the elderly, the feeble, the first time offenders, Lily reckoned had no place in that brutal environment. No one had caught her pulling her punches and releasing suspects with no more than a flea in their ear and now, she realized with a surge of elation, it was too late for her lapses to be discovered. She was resigning after all. At the end of the day.

‘Prattle on, Sandilands. Who do you think you’re kidding?’ Lily said, but she said it to herself.

Their car dropped them on Piccadilly and Lily set off to the station a few steps ahead of Joe, who paused to give instructions to his driver. She was greeted by the constable on duty at the door. PC Hewitt recognized her and hailed her from a distance with the joviality of a man looking forward to relieving his boredom with an exchange of police banter. Lily was known at the station for giving as good as she got and bearing no grudges. She didn’t look down on the men the way some of those toffee-nosed women did. She could take a joke.

‘Wotcher, Lil! On yer tod today, then? No scrapings from the park to offer us? Just as well. We’re a bit busy – it’s standing room only in there. Bedlam!’

‘Hello, Harry. No, I’m not alone.’ She waved a hand to indicate the presence of Sandilands, who was striding up the side road after her. ‘Not Halliday – he’s gone north. Instead, I bring you the commander. Or he brings me. Not quite sure. But we seem to be together.’

‘Gawd! That’s all we needed!’ PC Hewitt gritted out of the corner of his mouth. ‘What’s Young Lochinvar doing riding up again? Can’t they give him a desk to sit at? And what the ’ell’s ’e want with
you
?’ Hewitt gave her a look both salacious and speculative.

‘Oh, the usual,’ Lily said lightly. ‘I’m here to provide a little female insight.’

‘Lucky devil! I wonder what you can show him that we can’t?’

Smiling affably, Lily squared up to him. ‘Watch it. How’d you like to greet the boss hopping on one leg? These boots aren’t good for much but they’re damned good kneecappers.’

Hewitt grinned and, playing the game, jumped back, clutching his crotch. The girl had form. There was a sergeant in C division who had the limp to prove it, and gossip had it that the target zone had been some degrees north of kneecaps. He went into a smart salute as Sandilands approached and with a wink for Lily made a play of opening the heavy door with the panache of a hotel commissionaire.

But before they reached the charge room, the oppressive atmosphere of rage, pain, anger and despair had stopped even Sandilands in his tracks.

Chapter Eleven

The hubbub was punctuated by a top note of banshee screams of female outrage and a bass note of drunken singing. Somewhere a Scotsman was growling out the chorus of ‘Loch Lomond’. In the background, cell bells rang every few seconds and the heavy doors to the cell block creaked opened and clanged shut.

Sandilands presented himself to the elderly charge officer, who appeared insulated from the cacophony around him by three feet of shining mahogany counter. He waited for the sergeant to put down his mug of coffee and drop his newspaper to the floor.

‘Afternoon, sergeant. I’m surprised you can concentrate on the racing results with this hullabaloo going on. Stop it, will you?’

‘Sir! Yes, sir! I’d be only too glad to oblige, but, sorry, sir. I can’t, sir.’

There was steel in the commander’s tone as he responded to the affected servility. ‘You’re in charge here, are you not? If you have a superior officer about the place, produce him.’

The sergeant was not easily subdued. He’d seen commanders come and go. ‘Sorry, you’ve got
me
, sir. Best we can do for you this afternoon.’ His voice revealed a London man secure on his own patch and resenting the intruder. It was only just sufficiently deferential. ‘Nothing I’d like better than a bit o’ peace and quiet like what you ’ave at the Yard,’ he offered blandly. ‘But we’ve got our hands full today, what with the little bit of extra
you
sent us – those lads requiring a bit of special attention, like. The other prisoners have been backing up. We’re using the common space as an extra charge room.’ He pointed to a second room where a row of six young men sat disconsolately along the wall awaiting interrogation while a pair of constables filled in their details on forms at a large polished table, barking the occasional question at them.

All this was making an unfortunate impression on the commander. His spine straightened to an alarming degree, his height, already impressive, seeming to increase by a couple of inches. He had taken on a sinister stillness.

At last the sergeant became aware that he was running into danger and adjusted his tone. ‘Sorry about the din, sir. That caterwauling’s been going on since the constable arrested
her
.’ He pointed to a small and dishevelled prostitute who was attempting, between yells, to bite out the throat of the meaty lad holding her stolidly at arm’s length. ‘She’s gone bonkers. Name’s Doris. Tart. Has her beat along the Strand. Regular customer. Bit barmy, but this performance is unusual even for her.’

‘Sarge,’ Lily said, ‘give me a minute with her, will you? I’ve had dealings with Doris before – she knows me. I might be able to sort it out.’