Dead of Winter

sitting a little back from the table, near the corner, with his arms folded and a pensive look on his face.

‘Sir …?’

Lofty’s tone was respectful and it brought a grin to Billy’s lips. He had watched the effect of his old chief’s presence on both detectives with more than a little amusement. Even Joe Grace, as tough a nut as he’d encountered during his time in the Met, a man he’d once seen tackle a brace of thugs, enforcers for a smash-and- grab gang, and leave them both bloody and pleading for quarter, had moderated his usual abrasive manner and stood silent during the interview, as though out of deference to their visitor. And as for French Florrie, she had apparently decided from the outset that this was a male figure to whom she could relate, perhaps even flirt with, and had favoured him more than once with an inviting glance.

‘Yes, thank you, Inspector. There is one thing …’ Madden shifted in his chair so that he was facing the young woman. ‘You’ve been very patient, mademoiselle. I know how tedious this must be for you. But I was interested by something you’ve just said and I wondered if you could explain it.’

‘Something I said, monsieur?’

Florrie bestowed a smile on her new interrogator: not the faint, contemptuous curl of the lips she’d reserved thus far for Lofty and his two colleagues, men she was more usually inclined to view as her persecutors, but a generous parting of her wide mouth, offering a glimpse of white, pointed teeth.

‘Yes, to this man when he was leaving.’ Oblivious to the reaction he’d aroused, Madden pressed on. ‘You called him a name.’

‘C’est vrai. Une merde’ Unabashed, she repeated the words. ‘I already explain what it mean …’

‘Yes, yes, but you said it in French, am I right?’ Madden leaned forward.

‘Of course.’ She spread her hands.

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ She stared at him.

‘Why not speak in English, so he would understand?’

For a full five seconds her face remained a blank. Then comprehension dawned in her eyes.

‘Mais oui.’ The smile returned. Vous avez raison. But I speak in French because I know he will understand.’

‘What was that?’ Lofty Cook’s glance shot up from his notebook.

‘I forget to tell you …’ She turned to him. ‘When he talk to me first, this man, and he ask about the girl who is carrying the bags, I pretend not to understand. So he tell me she is wearing this thing on her head — ’ Florrie cupped her hands about her hair — ‘cette chose … je ne connais pas le nom … how do you call it?’

‘A hood,’ Madden said.

‘Exactement. An ’ood. This is a word I have not heard before and when he see that I don’t understand he tell me what it is — “un capuchon” — and then he speak to me in French. He ask me again which way she go. Voila!’ She demonstrated with a flourish of her hand. ‘This is how I know.’

Cook put down his pen.

‘So what are you saying exactly?’ he asked her. ‘Was he French? Is that what you’re telling us?’

‘Ah, non…’ Florrie waved her hand dismissively. ‘Pas du tout. He is English. I know from his accent.’

The Bow Street inspector made a final note. He glanced at Madden to see if there was anything further he wished to say.

‘Just one last question.’ Madden smiled at the young woman. ‘You said earlier — when you were telling us how you met this man — that you changed your mind about him?’

‘Monsieur …?’ She seemed puzzled by his query.

‘At first you tried to talk to him. But then you changed your mind; and quite suddenly, too. “This is one I know I don’t want.” That’s what you said. And I wondered why.’

She nodded her head thoughtfully. ‘It is true …’

Up to then he’d been polite. Even friendly. You said he was smiling. Isn’t that so?’

Again she nodded.

‘Why then?’

Florrie sat silent. She seemed uncertain how to reply.

‘Ecoute … it is hard explain.’ She blew out her cheeks in frustration. ‘Mais il’ y avait quelque chose … there was something about this man that was not right.’

‘Not right?’

‘All I can tell you is what I know.’

‘Of course, mademoiselle.’

Madden waited while Florrie sat tapping one red fingernail on the table top, searching for the right words.

Maybe it is his eyes, or maybe it is his smile — ’she glanced at Madden — ‘but when I look at him I know.’

‘Know what?’

‘That this is one to stay away from.’

7

‘I must say I had hopes after reading Miss Desmoulins’s statement. I thought there was a good chance someone else might have spotted this man. That we’d have other sightings of him. But no luck so far, I’m afraid.’

Sinclair’s sigh was lost in the static of the telephone line.

‘I tell you, John, this case is as slippery as an eel. You no sooner think you’ve got a grip on it than it slides through your fingers.’

Three days had passed since Madden and his wife had returned from London, and true to his word the chief inspector had rung his old partner to bring him up to date on the progress of the investigation. His call had come while Madden and Helen were eating breakfast, a meal they took these days in the kitchen, where there was a wireless, so that they could listen to the news, even though lately it offered little in the way of comfort. The heady days of summer when the advance of the Allied armies across France after the breakthrough at Normandy had seemed irresistible were past. True, Paris had fallen without a fight, but the debacle at Arnhem had put a stop to further progress, at least for the time being, and if the reports published in the newspapers and broadcast on the radio were true, German forces were now digging in at their frontiers in preparation for the bitter fighting to come.

To Madden, scarred by his memories of the slaughter of the trenches — by the conviction bequeathed him that war was merely butchery under another name — the conflict had seemed endless, the years of peace a distant dream. Too old for active service, he had commanded the Highfield Home Guard until its disbandment a few months earlier; but only out of a sense of duty. Like others of his generation he had hoped never to put on a uniform again. And while he did not question his country’s decision to take up arms — on this occasion its cause seemed manifestly right, its enemy an abomination — he could not blind himself to the suffering brought about by years of war, nor to the continuing sacrifice of youth it entailed. He needed only to listen to the voice of a news reader on the radio with its familiar litany of actions fought and casualties suffered to picture his own son, whose ship even now must be ploughing the icy waters off Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, a prey to enemy submarines, battered by storms and wrapped in perpetual winter darkness.

It was from this hellish realm of the imagination that Sinclair’s call had summoned him, and he’d had to struggle to adjust his thoughts to the cold reality of a young girl’s life snuffed out, her broken body cast aside, as the chief inspector’s familiar dry, clipped tones sounded in his ear.