now, shoppers queuing for mean lumps of cheese or slivers of meat, cars rumbling along chased by their own exhaust clouds.
I was getting good and warm now and could open my coat collar a bit. I thought about the two women I’d met last night. The contrast. The accident of birth and where it leads you. I could guess how growing up was for Val, but I had absolutely no idea how it was for Kate. Money and position make everything possible. I wasn’t jealous, just curious, as you would be for another species.
Even that little blink of fear I’d seen in Kate’s eyes when she saw my scar had been quickly controlled – mustn’t show emotions in front of the servants.
But at least I knew how to contact Kate Graveney. I had her phone number, somewhere in Chelsea – of course. I was to call her the moment I heard anything.
With Val – Valerie Brown; I rolled the syllables in my mouth – I had nothing, and the thought of not seeing her again filled my day with a shadow that had nothing to do with the weather.
I came into Lupus Street and began looking for my number. I didn’t have to do much counting. I could see the gap from the corner. I walked closer but stayed on the other side of the street sizing it up. It was as though a giant bread knife had taken out a clean slice, leaving the buildings either side untouched.
I guess all the terrace buildings had been constructed one by one. I walked over. There was still some rubble in the back garden. Bare trees stood at the end, and an old shed. What was I looking for? A pair of feet sticking out of the debris? I walked into the garden. The grass was sodden and studded with bricks.
There was that depressing smell of burnt wood and plasterboard soaked by persistent rain.
I kicked a brick sticking up on the edge of the pile and saw something lying to my left. I bent and picked up a shoe. High heeled, navy blue, good leather and size 4. I didn’t need to be a Prince Charming to know whose foot this would fit.
And she was no Cinderella. I brushed it clean and stuck it in my coat pocket. I looked but I didn’t find the other one.
“Hoi! No looting here, laddy!”
I turned to see an old man in a big cardigan and knotted scarf waving his walking stick at me. His breath ballooned about his head. I put on my best smile and walked over to him.
“It’s all right, sir. I know the lady who used to visit here. She asked me to see if I could find her shoes.” I dug out the shoe and showed it to him. He still looked suspicious.
“What lady would that be? I live across the road, you know. I see what’s going on here.”
“She was using the house. It belonged to a friend.”
“The Jamesons. Been abroad, they have,” he said triumphantly. Then his wrinkled eyes narrowed. “She a blonde?”
I nodded. I bet this nosy old bugger watched every passer-by and all the goings-on.
“She might be.”
“Her and her fancy man?”
“Could be.”
His suspicious look had turned into a secretive know-it-all one. He was dying to tell me more.
“You her husband?”
I laughed. “No.”
“A private dick, then.”
So, not so daft. “This isn’t about infidelity, sir. Did you see the explosion?”
His face fell and crumpled with annoyance. “I was asleep, wasn’t I. Near threw me out of my bed. Thought it was Jerry starting all over again.”
“Did you see the ambulances?”
“Oh, yes. But I couldn’t see what they were doing. Fire engines and everything.”
I could see I’d get nothing else from him and finally had to be rude to get away from him. Lonely old bugger. I walked back towards the river and struck north towards Parliament, and to Soho beyond. I was thinking about those poor lasses that had been killed there, the last just four days ago. The trade of the victims, and the way they’d been butchered drew a pattern, but I couldn’t read it yet.
Because of their precarious line of business the first murder had barely been given a mention among all the other news. Though for my own quaint reasons I had picked up on it and began my cuttings collection. But the second jolted the city, and the third began to set up a clamour. Now it was front page with headlines talking gleefully of the new Soho Ripper and “Jack’s back!”
It was as though something wicked had followed me from the camp. I had a sense of their deaths, as though I’d known them or shared their terror. Maybe it was this that drew me towards their killing ground. Or my copper’s training. One day it would kill me.
I walked straight up Whitehall, still marvelling at how so many of those grand buildings had survived. Parliament had taken a stick or two but they’d just moved to another part of Westminster Palace. Funny, the bombs couldn’t silence old Winston but we, the grateful voters, did. It wasn’t personal, he was just leading the wrong party. But it must have hurt.
Nelson was still on his column. And pigeons had never left Trafalgar Square except to take a breather from the incendiaries. There was a lot of rubbish around. It had been a good night for some. The dustbin men were getting stuck in. I pressed on up by the Windmill with its signs claiming they never closed during the Blitz. They were promising a New Year’s Day special: half price for the first twenty customers. I slowed to take in the photos of the girls, splendid with their feathers and smiles and impossible legs.
I walked along Rupert Street. It looked different to the other times I’d come here; daylight versus dark anonymity. I entered the little hallway and knocked on Mary’s door. Silence, but it was still only late morning: time for rest, especially if there had been some new year celebrations. I knocked again, harder.
“Wat you want?! We no open, yet. Come back later!” Mary’s high thin voice cut through the door like a dentist drill.
“Mary, it’s me, Danny. It’s business.”
I heard nothing for a minute then grumbling and catches being taken off and bolts sliding. Mary’s little round face showed round the crack of the door. She wasn’t wearing make-up. She had no eyebrows. It was a shock to see how old she was. Blessed night-time.
“Wat you want, Danny? Girls not up. They need beauty sleep. Like me.”
She did.
“It’s about these murders, Mary. I need some information.” I was calling in a favour I’d done her a couple of months back. There had been a spate of stealing from the girls’ rooms. Mary thought one of them was the culprit but didn’t want the boys in blue rampaging through her house. I caught the thief on the fire escape round the back; he was the neighbour’s kid. Justice was meted out according to local custom: the kid was given a good hiding and cash changed hands in reparation. The problem stopped.
She opened the door a little wider. She was in a blue silk dressing gown that fell to her tiny feet. Her hair was tightly held in a net. She looked even shorter today, shrunken. I thought of my mother. “Why you interested, Danny? You private dick, not real Bobby.”
I smiled at Mary’s sing-song cackle; we suffered the same degree of incomprehension by the English at times.
“Call it professional curiosity, Mary. Can I come in for a minute.”
Her eyes narrowed even further, then she stood back and let me in. She glanced outside to see who might have spotted me – the neighbours, and hence the police, didn’t like callers much at any time, far less during the day.
The familiar smell of incense and cheap perfume hit me like a shovel. I would catch a whiff on my clothes for days after one of my visits. I didn’t come here often, and when I first knocked on Mary’s door it wasn’t so much about the act itself as proving something to myself. They beat the shit out of me in the camp;
I wondered what else they might have knocked out.
Mary was a psychologist. She’d give Doc Thompson a run for his money. She took my measure that first time like a chef inspecting fruit at Covent Garden. She gave me green tea and talked to me, drew out a little of the story, a little of the need. Then she introduced me to Colette, a lippy dyed blonde with a happy heart. A natural at her profession. She told Colette to take her time, no rush.
