Dead of Winter

His meeting with Bennett was still going on when the first results of the enquiries he had set in motion reached him. They brought no comfort.

‘Bad news, sir. He’s hopped it.’

Billy Styles had rung the assistant commissioner from his own desk and Bennett had handed Sinclair the receiver.

‘We got the name of his landlady from the Wandsworth police. She owns the house where he had his flat. I’ve just spoken to her. She said he left nearly a month ago. That would have been right after Rosa Nowak was murdered. He told her he had a new job and was moving to Manchester. We got the name of his employers in London from her: they’re a City firm dealing in office supplies and Lofty’s spoken to them. Ash was one of their travelling salesmen. He’d had the job for three years, but he resigned a month ago; same time as he left his flat. But he gave them a slightly different story. Said his mother had died unexpectedly and his father who was ill himself had been left on his own. He said he had to go up to Manchester to take care of him. I reckon he made that up because he wanted to quit right away and not work out his notice. They weren’t best pleased, his employers, but they let him go.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’

Sinclair had caught Bennett’s eye and grimaced.

‘Lofty’s gone over to talk to them to see what else he can find out.’ Billy had continued with his recital. I’ll take Grace to Wandsworth with me. We’ll have a word with the landlady and look at his flat. It’s not rented yet. He may have left something there. And we’ll take a forensic team with us and dust the place for prints. They could come in handy later.’

Before Billy rang off, he and Sinclair had agreed that while the Manchester police would have to be alerted to the possibility that Ash might be there — remote though it seemed — the search should be concentrated on London for the time being, and it was decided that Ash’s name should be circulated to all stations in the Metropolitan area and a systematic search made of lists of guests and tenants at hotels and boarding houses.

‘When all’s said and done, and in spite of his wanderings these past twenty years, he’s still a Londoner,’ Sinclair had told Bennett after he’d hung up. ‘He’d be more at home here than anywhere else. Less noticeable, too.’

He had sat silent then, staring out of the window, until the assistant commissioner had interrupted his reverie.

‘What’s the matter, Angus? Why so down in the mouth? It would have been nice if he’d fallen into our hands like a ripe apple, but that was probably expecting too much. We’ve picked up his tracks now. Sooner or later we’ll catch up with him.’

‘I do hope so, sir. What puzzles me, though, is why he’s acted this way. Quit his job and moved out.’

‘Surely it’s obvious. He’s on the run.’

‘Yes, but why? What’s he afraid of?’

The chief inspector had turned his gaze away from the leaden sky outside.

‘He can’t know we’re searching for him. For Marko, I mean. Or Raymond Ash. There’s been nothing in the papers. Yet he acted as if we were already hot on his trail. Madden made the same point, but in a different context. He wondered why he’d set up the Wapping robbery in such haste. We still don’t know the answer to these questions, and that worries me.’

Later that same day the chief inspector paid a second visit to Bennett’s office, taking Billy with him and bringing a sheaf of typewritten reports compiled by the various detectives in the course of the day. The sketchy accounts of Ash’s life in London obtained earlier had been amplified by means of extended interviews with his landlady in Wandsworth, a widow named Mrs Fairweather, and the office manager of the company he’d worked for, an old-established firm called Beddoes and Watson. In addition enquiries had been made with the Home Office in the hope that a passport might have been issued to Ash at some time in the past. This proved to be the case. Records showed that he had applied for and received a travel document in the summer of 1919, but that the passport had never been renewed thereafter.

‘So he did come home after the war, but didn’t take the trouble to visit his mother,’ Sinclair had observed. ‘He must have set out on his travels after that. But there’s no record of a Raymond Ash returning here in 1940. It would certainly have been noted if his passport had expired. So he must have done what we supposed — got some French fisherman to ferry him across the Channel and not bothered to inform the authorities.’

On a more positive note, the Home Office had been able to supply Scotland Yard with a copy of the photograph affixed to Ash’s original passport, and this had been sent up to the photographic department.

‘We’re distributing copies of this to all police stations in London for a start,’ the chief inspector said after he’d shown one of the prints to Bennett. ‘Then we’ll extend it nationwide. He could be anywhere. But what we have to decide is whether to issue it to the press as well. As you can see, he was in his early twenties when it was taken. I dare say he’s changed somewhat.’

The assistant commissioner had gazed for a full minute in apparent fascination at the face portrayed in the grainy print. As Sinclair had said, the features were those of a young man, but beyond that there was little to remark in them. Raymond Ash’s dark hair was cut short and neatly combed on either side of a straight parting. His brow in the snapshot was pale, as were his slightly sunken cheeks. He had been snapped with his head raised a fraction — perhaps the photographer had told him to look up just then — with the result that the lids of his dark eyes were lowered, giving him a wary look.

‘Is there any reason we shouldn’t publish it?’ Bennett had asked.

‘Well, if it’s not a good likeness of him now it won’t help with the search. What it will do is alert him. Even if we make no reference to Wapping, just say we want to speak to this man, he’ll know we’re after him.’

‘But judging by what you said this morning, he seems to know that already,’ Bennett had pointed out.

‘True …’

The chief inspector had glanced at Billy, who was seated by his side.

‘What’s your opinion, Inspector?’

‘I think we should use it, sir.’ Having had time to think about what he was going to say, Billy replied at once. Even if he’s changed, there must be some resemblance. We’ll show it to Mrs Fairweather and to Ash’s fire-watching team and at his place of work and see what they say. Grace could get cracking on that right away.’

‘Do it then.’ With a glance at Bennett, Sinclair had given his consent.

The assistant commissioner had wanted to know what else had been discovered in the course of the day, and Billy had responded with a brief summary of all they had learned.

‘Basically, it’s what we expected, sir. He was a lone wolf. Didn’t mix with others. No friends. Mrs Fairweather told me he never had visitors. She lived on the ground floor, below his flat. He’d come and go pretty well to a fixed pattern. Off to work in the mornings and then back at night. Not always at the same time. It would depend on where his work had taken him during the day. We know from the office manager at Beddoes and Watson, a bloke called Badham, that his routes were all in an area south of London. In Kent and Sussex and Surrey. He’d visit customers they had or hoped to get in various towns, taking samples with him. Pens, pencils, paper clips, what have you. That’s what he would have had in his sample case, the one Florrie Desmoulins said he was carrying. The day Rosa Nowak was murdered he was visiting a firm down in Guildford. Badham checked it for us. The train Rosa caught would have stopped there. Ash spotted her either on the train, or later when they got to Waterloo.’

‘He’d obviously decided to lie low during the war and he’d found a job that suited him.’ Sinclair had let his younger colleague speak uninterrupted before offering his own view. ‘ was on his own all day. He didn’t have to mix with others. He’s not at ease in company. That seems to be the lesson of his years in Amsterdam and it was no different here. I wonder what he did about women, though. You might put out a query, Inspector. Ask the various divisions to check with the ladies on their books, particularly the ones who cater to deviant tastes. We know what his are and one or more of them may be able to help us with a lead.’

Billy had also been able to tell them about a further avenue of information that was being pursued. Earlier that day he had telephoned the War Office with a request for information about Raymond Ash’s military career, and been told by an official in the records department that a man of that name had served with the West Kent Regiment from March 1916 until the end of the Great War.

‘I got Lofty to ring the regimental headquarters for more information and we struck lucky,’ he told his two superiors. ‘ of the officers at the depot, a major, actually remembers Ash. He was his commanding officer for a