There was a folded paper on the bottom of the box. I opened it up. A few words were scrawled in capitals:
NEXT TIME IT WILL BE HER HEAD. FORGET HER!!!
I checked the box outside and in. Nothing else. I walked round to my chair and sat down and touched her hair, clinging to the notion that she was still alive.
Why else would have they sent the warning? Did it mean I was getting close? I picked up her curls in both hands and buried my face in it, inhaling her perfume and the faint tang of tobacco.
What the hell did I do now?
It was ten o’clock and the pubs were closing. Drinkers poured out of the bars, joshing and singing: displays of bravado before facing the wife with a schoolboy excuse for the dent in the pay-packet. I’d had a couple of pints at the King’s Head down at the Elephant, and found myself wandering down towards the river. My empty flat didn’t appeal. The pantry was bare and I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. I knew a good chippy, a van on a bomb site near London Bridge.
They had one cod left. It had my name on it, in a cone of newspaper with a mountain of chips all doused in salt and vinegar. Only a woman’s nape smells better. I walked over to the railings by the river and gazed out over the water, thinking it was time to go the police. I wolfed down the sodden batter and salt-encrusted chips, chucked the paper in the river and watched it float off downstream. I licked my fingers and began to walk back towards Borough High Street through one of the many alleyways that ran round Southwark Cathedral. My shadow ran in front of me as I dipped between rare pools of light.
That’s when I heard the steps. At first I wasn’t sure. A drunk passing, the faint echo of high heels running for the last bus, a dog on his night prowl. I slowed and listened. The streets were quiet. I stopped, listened again. Nothing.
I started again, this time walking faster. I suddenly did an about turn and walked smartly back the way I’d come. No one. I turned down a side street I hadn’t intended taking, slid into a door well and waited. If he was following me he was good. I gave it five long minutes. Still nothing. I glanced down the side street and saw it led nowhere. I pulled my hat down over my face and tiptoed to the corner feeling daft. I peered round.
He was standing with his back against the wall, hands in his pockets, waiting. I didn’t recognise him at first. He was big, but his coat hung loose on his frame like he’d borrowed it from a bigger brother. I walked up to him, slowly. I still didn’t recognise him. Then he grinned, and bile choked my throat. He was the last person I wanted to meet down a dark alley, away from witnesses.
“You’ve lost weight,” I said.
“Thanks to you.”
“Any time. Why are you following me, Wilson? Revenge?”
He shook his head. “Why didn’t you leave me to die?”
The last time I’d seen Detective Inspector Herbert Wilson, he was lying on the bare floor of one of Mama Mary’s flats. I’d lured him into a confrontation with the lovely but spoiled Kate Graveney. Wilson was groaning. Hardly surprising. He was bleeding his life out from a wound in his stomach, clawing at the splintered leg of the chair on which he’d impaled himself. It seemed a fitting but unintended revenge for his bestial plundering of nameless Soho girls including Kate herself. Not to mention the pasting he’d given me in the nick. I’ve known bent coppers in my time, but Wilson’s brand of bullying sadism made them look like wide-eyed cherubs.
“It wasn’t for your sake, believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you, McRae. I believe you.”
“Is that all you wanted to know? You could have phoned me. Or ambushed me in my office like everybody else does.”
“I can do you a favour.”
I laughed. “In return for what?”
“Helping us.”
I took out my cigarettes. I didn’t offer him one. Bad for his health. I lit up and watched my smoke drift through the street lamp.
“Us? Who’s us, these days, Wilson? Thought they’d pensioned you off.”
His grin widened. Even in the poor light his teeth looked brown. “Us is the Yard. Scotland Yard. CID.”
“God help us all,” I said with feeling. “Why would the Yard want to help me?”
“Eve Copeland. She’s not who you think she is.”
Her name in his mouth was like a blasphemy. I flicked my fag away. It spiralled into the dark and kicked up sparks when it hit the pavement.
“Oh? And who might she be?”
He put his head to one side and looked at me for my reaction. “A German spy.”
Can your whole body flinch? I laughed. “You’re daft, Wilson. Off your trolley.
They let you out of hospital too soon.”
His face lost the steady smile. “As I recall, you’re the one with the hole in your head, McRae. Are you going to listen?”
“Why the hell should I listen to a madman talking shit at midnight?” My mind was rotating like a whirligig. All I could see was her notebook with its encoded messages in German script and shorthand. But what did that prove? She was a linguist, OK? “Prove it, Wilson. Bloody well prove it.”
His smile widened. He was loving this. I should have let him bleed to death.
“Meet us at her flat tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Don’t be late. You’ll miss the party.” He tipped his hat at me, turned and walked away. I could have jumped him, given him a good kicking. We were alone. Instead I stood like a dummy looking after him. Then I lit another cigarette and walked home, my brain numb.
I got to her flat at quarter to ten. A policeman was standing on the front steps. I walked up to him, my mind dragging me back to the first night she sneaked me in and up to her bed. German spy indeed! “Sorry, sir. No one’s allowed in today.”
“I’m here to see Wilson. Detective Inspector Wilson.” The title stuck in my craw.
The bobby’s face changed. “Your name, sir?”
“McRae. Danny McRae.”
“You’re expected, sir. And it’s Superintendent Wilson now, sir.” He winked at me, turned and opened the door. “The Super and the other gentleman are with the landlady. Downstairs.”
The Super? So if you really screw up you get kicked upstairs. I walked down the hall, not on tiptoe this time. Voices drifted through the open door, and I recognised the landlady’s nagging tones.
“I knew she was up to something funny. I just knew it. All those late hours. Not right for a young woman. But who am I to say? It’s all different these days. No respect and no morals neither. And as for…”
“That’s fine, Mrs Gibson.” A man’s voice hurriedly cut in. Not Wilson’s, but familiar. It was a Kafka moment: my enemy and my friend allied against me. “I think we have all we need for the moment. We’ll just finish our search upstairs, if you don’t mind.” I heard rustling and a clatter of teacups.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell the neighbours…”
“Well, actually, nothing for the moment, if you don’t mind,” went the familiar posh tones.
I stood rooted in the hall waiting for him. He still had the moustache and the floppy hair, but now he was in civvies like the rest of us. It made him seem lesser.
“Hello, Gerry,” I said. My old boss, Major Gerald Cassells, SOE retired, had the grace to look sheepish as he emerged from the vocal clutches of Eve’s landlady.
“Hello, old boy. Funny old world.”
“Hilarious, Gerry. Wilson.” I nodded to the smirking figure filling the doorway behind him.
“Shall we go upstairs, Daniel?”
