Without the Moon (4 page)

6
THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE WEATHER

Tuesday, 10 February 1942

Sir Bernard Spilsbury looked every one of his sixty-five years as he stood over the single bed in the corner of the room in Wardour Street. There, beneath his frowning gaze, a woman lay stretched out diagonally; pale, white and naked, with great gashes of red across her neck and abdomen, from where her life had flowed away in a stream across the length of the room.

Next to her tangled blonde hair lay a safety razor blade and a pair of curling tongs, both encrusted in blood. In the middle of her open legs, a bloodied tin opener had been left, the business end pointing towards the handle of a torch that had been forced inside her, that had once been white but now was crimson.

So much blood.

“There was an attempt at manual strangulation before the throat was cut,” the pathologist said, a waver in his voice. “Look at the abrasions on the front of the neck and the signs of haemorrhaging in the eyes and mouth.”

Cherrill and Greenaway exchanged glances. Another freezing cold room, their breath hanging like ectoplasm on the dank air around them.

Spilsbury cleared his throat before he pointed to the puncture wounds dotted around the woman's pubic hair. “These bled a little,” he said. “They were probably inflicted when she was on the verge of death, after the cut to the neck.”

“Thank heavens for small mercies,” said Cherrill softly.

Spilsbury gave a nod and rubbed his eyes. “I'll know more after a full post mortem, of course.”

“That,” said Greenaway, pointing to the tin-opener, “reminds me of the way he left the gloves on the last one. He thinks it's all one big joke, don't he?”

Neither of the other two men asked him which last one he meant.

“I think I'll be able to get some prints,” was all Cherrill said. “I've found dabs on her mirror, and of course,” he nodded at the implements arranged around the woman's body, “there's those, too.”

He turned to Greenaway: “There's a detective next door with the woman who found her. She's not making much sense yet, but then, how could she? Poor old girl. At the very least, we know who this once was.”

It was one of those peculiar coincidences that just became more commonplace the longer you worked for the law. This was a woman who had once been called Evelyn, too. Evelyn Bettencourt, alternatively known as Nina Oakley, a part-time actress who had fallen on hard times with the coming of the war and taken to supplementing her income with a few gentleman callers from time to time.

This much Greenaway was able to get from the detective attending to Ivy Poole, her neighbour. Ivy, a spinster, who as Cherrill had indicated was knocking on a bit herself, worked as an assistant at what they called the fun-fair in Leicester Square, a tawdry assemblage of shooting ranges, slot machines and manky farm animals, where she was obliged to dress as an approximation of Calamity Jane, if the felt Stetson hat and shirt adorned with lampshade fringing that hung on the back of her door were anything to go by.

Greenaway felt the sadness of wasted years as he surveyed the single bed and one-ring stove of Ivy's little room, the solitary bowl and plate left in her sink when the meter men had roused her from her slumbers at 8am that morning to take a reading. Luckily it was the men from the Central Electric Company who had gone into her neighbour's room ahead of her and stopped her from seeing the full horror of what was in there. But Ivy had still seen the blood.

Now she sat on her bed wrapped in a candlewick dressing gown, clutching a long-cold mug of tea, red eyes staring into the distance. Letting the junior detective take his leave, Greenaway introduced himself and sat down next to her.

“All right, love?” he said, gently prising the mug from her hands. “D'you want me to make you a fresh one?”

For the first time in hours, Ivy heard something other than the Frenchwoman's words about servicemen. It was something about the size of the bogey sat next to her and the gentleness of his sleepy-lidded eyes that calmed her. Ivy's eyes regained their focus as she slowly took him in, her shoulders slumping, her mouth attempting the flicker of a smile. She shook her head.

“No, ta, dear,” she said. “Ain't nothing another one of them's gonna make seem any better. Not after what he done in there. What he done to poor Nina. The
bastard
.”

Greenaway leant down and opened his murder bag a fraction, enough so Ivy couldn't see inside of it, but so that he could extract the special extra item he always carried there. He poured her out a teacup full of Scotch and handed it to her, watched her pupils enlarge for a second before she took a hefty slug.

“Ta, ducks.” Ivy wiped a hand across her mouth. “That was just what I did need, Inspector.”

“So what can you tell me, Ivy,” Greenaway flicked open his notebook, “that'll help me put a noose around a bastard's neck?”

Ivy straightened herself up. “I saw him,” she said. “I saw the man what come in with her last night.”

“Yeah?” Greenaway encouraged. “Tell me what he looked like, Ivy.”

“He was a young man,” she said. “Tall and handsome, I suppose – from a distance anyway.”

“You saw him up close, then?”

“I did,” said Ivy. “I heard her come in the front door about twenty to twelve. I went and turned the landing light on for her, like I always do. They was coming up the stairs, the pair of them.”

“Good,” Greenaway nodded. “So you saw them both come in together. You said he was a young man, how old would you say?”

Ivy pursed her lips. “'Bout twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that,” she said.

“You remember what colour his hair was?”

“I do,” said Ivy. “It was a sort of goldie-brown, wavy at the front, but going a bit frizzy at the back, like he ain't put enough Brylcreem on it.” She squinted as she reached back into memory. “Parted on the left, I think. He had a moustache as well, just a small one.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it, Ivy?” said Greenaway, taking it all down. “Good girl. You remember what he was wearing?”

“A uniform, by the looks of it,” Ivy was still staring down her time-tunnel. “Big greatcoat, but not no ordinary one, this one looked like it was tailor-made. Had a belt around the waist. Blue. That's RAF, ain't it?”

Greenaway stopped writing. Reservist Constable Stokesby popped in his head, saying: “What people there was about were soldiers …”

Not perhaps as blind as he had first appeared.

“It could be, Ivy, it could be. Well remembered, love, that's a very important detail,” Greenaway encouraged. “Now why did you say he seemed handsome, until you got close up?”

Ivy took another swig from her teacup. “Well,” she said, dander now fully up, “when they passed my door, I had a good look at his face. It was all angles, you know, and he had these queer, light-coloured eyes that just seemed to see straight through you. He weren't handsome, but he thought he was. I think he fancied himself rotten.”

“And Nina,” Greenaway used the name Ivy called her neighbour, “how did she seem?”

“Oh, all right, her usual self, you know. She gave me a smile and said goodnight. She's a lovely girl, is Nina …”

Not wanting her to drift back away from him, Greenaway put his hand on Ivy's arm, made sure he had her full attention; that she was looking straight into his eyes.

“Then what happened, Ivy? Did you hear anything coming from the room?”

“Nina always puts the radio on when she gets in. Out of respect for me. I could hear the midnight news from the BBC coming on when I started to get ready for bed. It had finished by the time I'd turned in, there was just some music coming through the walls, dance bands, that sort of thing. Then, just as I was drifting off, it got turned up loud, real loud. Well, I should have known, shouldn't I, that he was up to no good? Nina wouldn't never be so rude …”

Ivy's eyes darted away from him, starting to look fearful again. “I should have gone to have a look, shouldn't I, Inspector? I should have tried to help her. Only …”

Greenaway gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “No you shouldn't, Ivy. There was nothing you could have done against that maniac. I wouldn't have wanted to find the two of you in there, now, would I?”

Tears welled in Ivy's eyes. “No, sir,” she said, sounding like a child.

“Listen, Ivy,” said Greenaway. “You done a good job here, girl, you can be proud of yourself. You've helped me and you've helped Nina, too.”

Ivy shook her head again, but a momentary flicker of defiance returned to her face.

“You will get him, won't you, Inspector?”

“You got my word on it,” said Greenaway, handing her the rest of the bottle.

– . –

The Archer Street joint was late-afternoon quiet. Just a couple of terminal old soaks snoozing over their plates of curled-up sandwiches and half-empty pint pots and a cleaner pushing a mop half-heartedly across the floor to the strains of ‘Blues in the Night' coming out of the wireless, nodding her head sagely in time to the tune and the wisdom imparted by the lyrics.

Swaffer was not at the piano stool just yet, but lurking in the corner behind the stage, just visible behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, scribbling into his shorthand notebook.

“What do you know?” said Greenaway.

Swaffer looked up, blinked. “A couple of things,” he said. “One: you've been busy. You've shrugged off that lugubrious air that's been haunting you since your onerous transfer. Two: the ladies of the parish are talking.” He raised his eyebrows. “These things must be connected.”

“What they talking about?” Greenaway pulled up the chair that was opposite the journalist and swung it round beside him, to sit where he could see but not be seen.

“An airman, I believe. Calls himself an officer. Am I getting warm yet?”

Greenaway nodded. “Here's one for your Ouija board, Swaff. There are two dead bodies in the morgue, both women called Evelyn. Miss Bourne and Mrs Bettencourt. Apart from their names, they couldn't be more different. Miss Bourne was a pharmacist from Newcastle. I've just been talking to her sister.”

Greenaway's brow creased as he recalled the telephone conversation. Miss Kathleen Bourne was due in London tomorrow, entrusted with the ordeal of claiming her older sibling's body.

“A troubled woman,” Greenaway said. “On the outside, intelligent and respectable. Qualified as a chemist from Edinburgh University in 1938, got a job as a shop manageress there soon after, stayed for nearly two years and then suddenly packed it all in. Told her sister she was bored stiff with it, wanted a change.

“Next she gets herself a job as a travelling saleswoman for a firm in Leicestershire, plugging new medicines to shops. Sticks that for seven months before she goes back home to her Ma's in a state of depression. The sister persuades her to see a headshrinker she knows, who tells her she's suffering from overwork and needs some kind of tonic. So she takes it easy for a couple of months, not doing much except reading and going to the theatre. No sign of a boyfriend in all this time; in fact, her sister couldn't remember her ever having had one, or even having mentioned one.”

“Ah,” said Swaffer. “I'm getting a sort of a picture here. A well of loneliness, do you think?”

“Maybe.” Greenaway shrugged. “Or she could have been one of those unfortunate women who only seem to be able to attract the attentions of married men. That would explain her secrecy, breaking her jobs off suddenly, the depression. Her sister described her as an intellectual and a socialist, who only ever wanted to improve her mind – maybe she was an admirer of yours and that's what sent her round the twist. Whatever's the case, she's not the type of woman who lets herself get picked up in the street by a soldier. Not even on the night of her birthday.”

“Her birthday?” Swaffer echoed. “It was her birthday on Sunday?”

Greenaway nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “She treated herself to a slap-up meal in the Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch. A plate of beetroot salad. Half an hour later she was dead.”

Swaffer dropped his cigarette into the ashtray and reached for another. “Is that what brought her to London?” he asked, sparking up his Ronson.

Greenaway shook his head. “For the past few months she's been working at a chemist's shop in Hornchurch, living in digs nearby. Sunday last, out of the blue, she settles up with her landlady, tells her she's got a new job in Grimsby, but she's stopping off at London for the night on the way – to make a connection in the morning, I suppose. She had arranged for her luggage to be forwarded. But here's another funny thing: the booking clerk said she told him she was fed up with moving around and wanted to spend the rest of her days in peace. He said she had something wrong with her voice, and all, like her vocal cords were mangled.”

Swaffer jolted, as if he had been given an electric shock. “Good Lord,” he said. “As if she had a premonition …”

“Don't start with that,” said Greenaway. “I don't want to hear it. But,” he relented, “I know what you mean. And that ain't information I'm going to be sharing with the rest of the pack, neither. So, what else have you got for me?”

“He has a thing about blondes, apparently.”

“Evelyn Bourne was about as dark as they come, her hair was almost black,” said Greenaway. “But she did have the unfortunate habit of always carrying all her cash around with her. That's what got her killed. He watched her in the Corner House, I reckon, followed her from there. Evelyn Bettencourt, on the other hand, was a proper bombshell, just the type to get carried away by a fancy airman. So where's your snout, Swaff? You didn't find her hanging around here, did you?”

“Hereabouts,” Swaffer withdrew the cigarette from his lips with a flourish. “I found her on her way back from her hair-dresser's in Shaftesbury Avenue actually, although I see her more often at Miss Moyes's. She is an old acquaintance of yours, too, I believe. I thought you might want to look her up.”