‘Same as the Nowak girl,’ Lofty said. ‘It’s got to be the same bloke.’
Myers, the forensic man, was just finishing his inspection of the front-door lock.
‘You guessed right,’ he said to Billy as he went out. ‘This one’s been fiddled, too.’
Billy told Cook about the upstairs door.
‘Either he followed her down here to Cable Lane, or he was waiting. It would have been easier to do her outside in the alley, but she had a man with her. He had to wait.’
‘Some nerve, though,’ Lofty said. ‘Tiptoeing up the stairs.’
In the darkness of the narrow alleyway all Billy could see of his lanky colleague was a glimpse now and again of his hatchet features as he drew on his cigarette. The air was freezing and their frosty breath mingled with the smoke they expelled. Footsteps approached from the black pit at the end of the street.
‘I’ve got him, guv.’ The voice was female, the accent pure Cockney. ‘He was in the Black Cat, trying to sneak out the back. Must have heard we were looking for him.’
Billy caught a glimpse of a peaked cap. Then the caped figure of a WPC emerged from the darkness.
‘Where’s he now?’ Lofty asked.
‘In the back of your car.’ She nodded behind her. ‘I left him there with Hoskins. Told him we wanted a word with him down at the station. He’s asking for his brief.’
‘Well, he can whistle as far as I’m concerned.’ Cook trod on his cigarette. ‘This is Poole,’ he told Billy, who’d guessed as much — he remembered the name of the officer who’d been first at the scene when Rosa Nowak’s body was discovered. ‘I sent her off to pick up Florrie’s pimp. He’s a Maltese called Ragusa. Lil, this is Inspector Styles. He’s from the Yard.’
‘Guv.’ She touched her cap.
‘Now let’s all get inside. It’s perishing out here.’
In the dimly lit hallway WPC Poole was revealed to be a fair-haired young woman, still in her twenties, but with a strong, determined face that made her seem older. Short and stocky, her slightly protruding lower jaw gave her the look of a bulldog, one you’d think twice about crossing, Billy thought. Her glance took him in briefly before her eyes, blue as periwinkles, settled into a neutral gaze.
‘Did Ragusa know about Florrie?’ Cook asked her.
‘Yes, he’d heard all right. But he’s not saying much.’
‘What do you know about him?’ Billy asked. ‘How does he treat his girls?’
‘Do you mean, would he top one, like what happened to Florrie?’
The bluntness of her question took Billy by surprise; he was accustomed to more deference from the lower ranks of the uniformed branch. But he nodded, after a moment.
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’
Poole pursed her lips, weighing the question.
‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ she said. ‘But they’re his living and you can’t get money from a corpse. Besides, he’s got another way of keeping them in line.’
‘What’s that?’
She shrugged. ‘You can usually tell one of Tony’s girls. Like as not she’ll have a scar on her cheek, just a nick.’ She touched her own with a fingertip, and Billy recalled the mark he’d seen on Juanita de Castro’s face. ‘That’s what he does to them if they make trouble, or he thinks they’re being lazy. Not enough to ruin their looks, just enough to make them think how bad it could be if he really got to work on them. Dago bastard,’ she added, for good measure, causing Billy to blink once more.
‘Is that it, then, Lil?’ Lofty caught Billy’s eye and winked.
‘Not quite.’ She turned to him. ‘I’ve just heard about a bloke who may have been looking for Florrie.’
‘Oh, yes —?’ Cook’s tone sharpened.
‘He was in the Three Stars the other day. Said he was trying to find a red-headed French tart. Didn’t know her name, but thought she had a pitch somewhere up near Tottenham Court Road tube station. He spoke to Ma.’
‘The Three Stars is a cafe the toms use,’ Lofty told Billy. ‘In Peter Street. It’s run by an old girl called Ma Hennessy. Did she get his name?’ He put the question to Poole, who shook her head.
‘Ma never asked him. She gave me a description, though. Said he was a skinny bloke with small eyes, like a weasel. She didn’t take to him. Reckoned he’d been inside.’
‘Why was that?’
‘No special reason. But Ma can usually sniff ’em out. He didn’t get anything from her. She told him she didn’t know who he was talking about: didn’t know any red-headed French tarts.’
Lofty clicked his tongue. ‘Skinny? Doesn’t sound like our man, worst luck. Still, you’d better ask around, Lil. Have a word with some of the other girls. See if they know this bloke.’
‘Will do, guv.’ She touched her cap.
‘And find out if any of them gave him Florrie’s address,’ Billy added.
Poole turned her blue gaze on him: though her glance remained neutral, Billy had the impression he was being weighed up.
‘Her address? Right, guv.’
She turned on her heel and went out, shutting the door behind her.
‘Good officer you’ve got there,’ he remarked to Lofty. Got her wits about her. She ought to be in plainclothes.’
Cook grunted. ‘Don’t let Lil hear you say that. She’s put in three times for the CID and been turned down. You know how the Met brass feels about the fair sex. Some of them, anyway. The fewer the better. She’s been warned to stop bellyaching. Told to put a sock in it. She’s not best pleased.’
‘Got a mind of her own, has she?’ Billy had guessed as much.
‘That and more.’ Lofty chuckled. She’s a right tartar when she’s roused, our Lil. Bloody good copper, though.’
It was seven by the time Billy got back to the Yard, and as he stepped out of his car he could see in the distance, to the south-east, searchlights probing the night sky, illuminating the barrage balloons that floated like giant moths above the darkened city. They were there to hinder the approach of flying bombs, though few believed they were of any use, any more than the ack-ack guns that blazed away furiously whenever the strange craft with their fiery tails appeared in the skies. (Rumour said they had yet to hit one.) And neither were they any defence at all against the V-2s, which descended without warning like thunderclaps and which Londoners had come to fear more than any other weapon used against them. Only a few weeks before, one had landed on a Woolworths in New Cross Road, killing more than 150 people, housewives mostly, and Billy could only thank his lucky stars his own family was safe and living out of range of this new sky-borne peril.
He had spent the last hour at Bow Street police station going over the details of Florrie’s murder with Lofty and Grace after the latter had returned from Cable Lane with the news that the forensic squad had completed their examination of the house and had nothing further to report.
‘He must have come in and out like a cat,’ Grace had commented. Didn’t leave a mark apart from a few scratches on the locks. And a dead body, of course.’
He had returned just as Cook and Billy were interviewing Florrie’s pimp, an unrewarding exercise made more difficult by the Maltese’s reluctance to answer any questions except in the presence of his lawyer, whom Lofty had refused to have called.
‘Can’t you get it into your head? We’re not accusing you of anything. We just want a word.’
Dark and dapper, with plastered-down hair and a thin moustache, Ragusa had stayed mum at first. His eyes, moist and motionless as a lizard’s, were fixed in an unblinking stare, and when at last he’d responded it was only to advise them in a heavily accented voice that any attempt to link him with the death of this young lady’ would result in a charge of harassment being laid against the police. These final words had been overheard by Grace as he’d joined them in the interview room, and they brought a swift response from the irascible detective.
‘Harassment? Why, you miserable Maltese insect, you don’t know the meaning of the word. Let me tell you something. You can’t breathe in this country now without breaking the law. I could step into that sewer you call a club and find half a dozen violations of the emergency regulations without blinking an eyelid. We can have you up in court from now until Christmas, that’s next Christmas I’m talking about, and in the meantime we’ll arrest every one
