At that point Billy had gone inside, slipping sideways through the door and stepping carefully over the corpse, which he’d bent to examine. Beyond, in the bedroom, he’d found Joe Grace busy with two detectives from the forensic squad. It was after five, already dark outside, and the men had drawn the curtains and switched on two red-shaded lamps whose glow was reflected in a gold-framed mirror above the dressing table. Grace had been going through a chest of drawers filled mostly with underclothes, judging by the pile of lacy garments on the floor at his feet.
‘Nothing so far,’ he’d told Billy. ‘She must have got up to go to the door.’ He indicated the double bed behind him where the pillow was dented and the bedclothes pushed back. ‘I’m not sure he ever got in here. There’s no sign of it. Just did what he came to do and buggered off.’
Billy had looked about him. Hanging on the wall above the bed was a painting of a nude woman stretched out on a couch. Her cap of red hair suggested it might be an idealized version of Florrie herself, though Billy couldn’t see much resemblance. There was a second mirror, attached to the ceiling and positioned above the bed, and as he craned his neck to look up at it he heard Grace’s harsh cackle.
‘Now that’s what I call a bird’s-eye view.’
On the bedside table were two framed photographs, one of the Eiffel Tower, the other of a woman wearing a white apron and the sort of cap favoured by bakers. She was holding a little girl by the hand, and this time Billy thought he recognized the shape of Florrie’s catlike features in the small, grinning face.
At that point the sound of voices had signalled a new arrival and Billy had gone out into the short passage to find the familiar burly figure of Ransom crouched down over the body. As he’d watched, the pathologist had shifted on to his knees so as to peer more closely at the wound on Florrie’s throat.
‘Garrotted, beyond doubt. An expert job, by the look of it.’ Raising his eyes he’d caught sight of Billy. ‘Inspector! We meet again!’
‘Hello, sir. Expert, did you say?’
Billy had joined him beside the body.
‘That’s my impression. But I’ll want to look at her more carefully.’
Ransom had taken one of Florrie’s hands in his and was testing the finger and wrist joints. He glanced under the nails.
‘Rigor’s receding. She’s been dead more than twelve hours.’
‘We think it happened during the night.’ Billy glanced at Lofty, who was standing on the other side of Ransom in the half-opened doorway. ‘What we’re wondering is whether there’s any connection to the Bloomsbury murder.’
‘You’re referring to the young woman whose neck was broken?’
Ransom rose to his feet, grimacing. He flexed his knees.
‘I take it you’ve some reason to believe that. Apart from the medical evidence, I mean, which is far from conclusive.’
He stood pondering, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in a frown.
‘I mean, the method’s different, that’s obvious. Strangulation in this case — that’s assuming I don’t find some other injury — a broken spinal cord in the other. Plus here the killer had recourse to artificial means, which wasn’t the case in Bloomsbury. There the man used his bare hands.’
‘Yes, but we think he was caught unprepared.’ Billy continued to probe. He wasn’t expecting to encounter Miss Nowak that evening.’
‘And not even your habitual murderer walks around with a garrotte in his pocket just on the off chance. I take your point. He came here armed because he knew what he was going to do.’
Ransom mused a moment longer. ‘Look, from a medical point of view I can’t really help. There’s not enough basis for a comparison. But there is one thing that strikes me: the efficiency with which these two young women were dispatched.’
The pathologist paused. He cocked an eye at Billy.
‘Speaking as a doctor, I can tell you that’s rare. It’s much harder to kill a human being than you might think. I’m not speaking of bombs and bullets now. I mean by the use of one’s hands, whether or not one employs a piece of wire. Much harder. Both physically and psychologically.’
‘Unless you have the knack for it,’ Billy said. ‘Is that your point?’
Ransom shrugged. ‘I don’t want to mislead you. But if it does turn out to be the same man, then you’ll be looking for an exceptionally cold-blooded individual, and in all likelihood one who has done this sort of thing before.’
He bent to pick up his bag from the floor.
‘None of which, I hasten to say, will appear in my report, which will be business as usual. If you get her back to Paddington right away, I can do the post-mortem today.’
Leaving Billy to oversee things at the flat, Lofty had accompanied Ransom back to St Mary’s. They had both wanted to be certain what they were dealing with — to be sure that Florrie’s death, like Rosa Nowak’s, was a case of murder pure and simple — before moving on to the next step in the investigation, which would have to include the possibility that the two killings were connected.
‘The chief inspector’s going to want some answers,’ Billy had told his old pal. ‘Which won’t be easy, seeing as how we’re still scratching our heads over the other business. I’ll talk to Ackers again while you’re gone. And Miss Castro. She’s had long enough to pull herself together.’
Neither, however, had been able to add anything to the detectives’ sum of knowledge, scant as it was. Mildred Ackers had stuck doggedly to the account she’d already given of the previous evening. Florrie had gone upstairs a little after half-past nine and had not been seen or heard from again. Juanita de Castro had returned soon afterwards with a client who’d departed in due course. Thereafter, as far as Ackers was aware, the house had been quiet.
At that point, however, there’d been a new development. Joe Grace had called down the stairwell to Billy to come up. He was on the landing with one of the detectives from the forensic squad, a man named Myers.
‘Pete says this lock’s been fiddled with,’ Grace told Billy. ‘Here, have a butcher’s.’
He’d handed him a torch and Billy had got down on his haunches. With the aid of the beam he saw where a probe of some kind had cut grooves into the patina of grime coating the inner workings of the lock.
‘Just what I thought,’ Billy said. He was pleased with his stroke of intuition. ‘Now take a look at the street door. I think he crept in here while her ladyship was listening to Billy Cotton at the Starlight Room. I wonder if Juanita heard any footsteps on the stairs.’
The answer was soon forthcoming. Roused by Joe Grace, who had banged on her locked door repeatedly until the dishevelled woman appeared, she had denied hearing any sound at all after she’d gone to bed. Dark-haired, with a mole on one cheek and a small, crescent-shaped scar on the other, Juanita de Castro had emerged still fumbling with the cord of her robe, offering glimpses of a well-fleshed body beneath it. Her cheeks, smeared with mascara, had shown the tracks of the tears she’d undoubtedly been shedding.
‘It’s a bleeding shame,’ she’d said to Billy, with a glare at Grace, who had ogled her nakedness, grinning. She was a nice girl, Flo was. She had a good heart. What are you lot doing to stop this sort of thing, that’s what I’d like to know. Bugger all’s the answer.’
‘Here, that’ll do …’ An outraged Grace had shaken his finger at her, but she’d ignored him.
‘So why’d it happen?’ she’d demanded of Billy. ‘You tell me that.’
‘I can’t,’ he’d replied quietly, looking her straight in the eye, letting her know he was different from other coppers, a trick he’d learned during his time with John Madden all those years ago, the way
But she hadn’t, she told him. Once her customer had departed she’d gone to sleep and only roused herself at midday to go out for an hour or two. Soon after her return the constable sent by Bow Street had arrived in search of Florrie and she’d been persuaded to let him in to the flat above hers.
‘I saw her lying there. Poor Flo. She never did no harm to anyone. All it takes is one rotten bastard …’
Billy had let her go back into her flat and soon afterwards Lofty had returned from Paddington with a more detailed account of how Florrie had met her end and an assurance from Ransom that she had not been assaulted in any other way.
