Dead of Winter

‘I can’t explain now, Constable. There isn’t time. You must speak to Chief Inspector Sinclair. Ask him to ring me here at Mrs Spencer’s number. Tell him it’s urgent.’

‘Isn’t there anything I can do, sir?’

It had been plain from Leonard’s tone that he wasn’t altogether comfortable with the request.

‘Not at this moment. Later perhaps. You’ll have to trust me, Constable.’

Ten minutes later the phone had rung, and Madden, who had not left the sitting-room, had picked up the receiver and found himself talking to Sinclair.

‘I’m sorry, John, I was out of my office. They had to hunt me down.’

Calm as his voice was, Madden had realized from his old chief’s tone that he was under some stress himself and he would do well not to waste time on preliminaries. Accordingly he had plunged at once into an account of what he’d just learned.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you about this before I came over here, Angus, but frankly I didn’t think it would amount to anything. I just wanted to find out who this other Polish girl was.’

‘Tell me quickly about her encounter with Ash in Paris. Did she see him face to face? Can she identify him?’

‘I believe so. The report you got from the French police is substantially correct. Only it wasn’t Rosa who went to Sobel’s house that evening, it was Eva Belka. She and her husband had been offered a lift to Spain in Sobel’s car and told to be at his house on the outskirts of Paris by a certain hour. They went there separately and Eva arrived first. She found the front door ajar, and when she pushed it open he was there. Ash. On his knees by Sobel’s body.’

Recounting the scene to him earlier, the young woman had turned pale at the memory, biting her lip.

‘Ash must have strangled him moments before. He was busy gathering what Eva said looked like stones from the floor. The diamonds, obviously. She screamed and ran back to the street and he went after her. As she came out of the garden gate she saw a pair of patrolling gendarmes nearby and ran towards them. Ash was coming up fast behind her at that point, but when he saw the police he turned tail and fled. They went after him and one of them called to Eva to wait for them, but instead she carried on and when she reached the Metro station she met her husband, who was coming out of it with their luggage. She told him what had happened and suggested they go back to the house and wait for the police. But he stopped her. It was as we surmised. He saw at once how dangerous that would be for them. They’d be detained as witnesses by the French police in Paris and eventually fall into the hands of the Germans, and for him that would have meant a death sentence. He’d been part of a resistance group in Warsaw and there was a price on his head. Added to which, Eva’s Jewish. The only thing for them to do was to flee Paris at once.’

‘How did they get to England?’ Sinclair had listened in silence.

‘Via Spain and eventually Portugal. Partly on foot. When they got here Eva’s husband — his name’s Jan Belka — enlisted in the armed forces. He’s serving with the Polish Brigade. Some weeks ago he was wounded in Holland and brought back to England to recuperate. Eva went up to Norwich to see him in hospital. That was when she met Rosa.’

‘And Ash spotted her, did he?’

‘Without doubt. And she saw him, too. But her reaction wasn’t what you might expect. The train was standing in Guildford station when the door to the compartment opened and a man put his head in. Eva and Rosa were talking hard and at first they didn’t register his presence. This was what Eva told me. But then she looked up and saw he was staring at her. It was Ash. Eva recognized him at once — or thought she did — and it must have shown on her face. The next instant he slammed the door shut. That pilot I spoke to, Tyson, only saw the look on Rosa’s face. She seemed startled, but it’s clear now that what she was responding to was Eva’s reaction. She kept asking her what was wrong, but Eva didn’t say. She’d been struck dumb.’

‘But surely by the time they reached Waterloo she must have recovered enough to report it?’

‘Recovered, yes, but not in that way.’

Madden paused. He was remembering the anguished look on the young woman’s face as she had tried to explain the workings of her mind to him.

‘All she’d managed to do by then was persuade herself that she’d imagined the whole thing: seen a man who resembled the one she’d spotted for an instant in the hall at Sobel’s house four years earlier. You see, this wasn’t the first time it had happened to her. On several occasions in the past few years she’s seen faces that reminded her of the killer’s. I didn’t say this to her, but a guilty conscience probably played its part in that. My guess is she’s been tormented by the memory and also by her failure to offer herself as a witness.’

‘Why on earth didn’t she, then? Surely after all this time …?’ The chief inspector couldn’t contain his chagrin.

‘Time was partly the problem, Angus. The poor girl’s mortified, but I think I understand the way her mind worked. After all these years, what was the point? For all she knew, the real killer might have been arrested and dealt with long ago. The last place she would have expected to meet him was in England, and that only reinforced her feeling that she was a victim of her own fantasies. But the biggest factor in all this has been her husband.’

‘Her husband-?’

‘From the very start he’d been against her going to the authorities, not only in Paris, where it made sense, but here in England, too, and it seems he was persuasive. He took the view that there was nothing she could do to help in apprehending the man she had seen, at least until the war was over. She’d achieve nothing by going to the police here except involve them both in a situation from which no good could come. Technically she’d been in breach of the law in Paris, and the only likely result was that she’d be entangled in an enquiry which might well turn out badly for them, given their position as aliens. It’s a pity they’ve been apart so much, Eva and her husband, otherwise I think she might have persuaded him to the contrary. But she seems to have been reluctant to act against his advice. At least until she went up to Norwich.’

‘What happened there?’

‘She visited her husband in hospital and told him about her experience on the train. He repeated the arguments he’d used before, but something had obviously changed in her. By the time she returned to Liphook she had made up her mind to act, and though it took her a while to pluck up her courage she went to her employer a few days ago and told her the whole story. Mrs Spencer said the authorities had to be informed at once and offered to accompany her to police headquarters in Petersfield. It was agreed they would do so immediately after Christmas.’

‘And she had no idea of what had happened to Rosa?’

‘None at all. They never see a newspaper down here. Although she had given Rosa Mrs Spencer’s telephone number and was hoping to see her again, she had no way herself of getting in touch with her, or of finding out what had happened to her.’

‘I take it she didn’t see Ash again when they reached Waterloo?’

‘Apparently not, though I’m not sure how hard she looked. I think by that time she’d convinced herself it couldn’t have been him. We shouldn’t overlook how it must have seemed to her: the sheer unlikelihood of him turning up in England after four years of war. What matters, though, is the effect seeing Eva that day had on him.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It explains what happened afterwards: what’s been baffling us. The speed with which he acted. He’d come face to face with the only witness who could send him to the guillotine, and from the look on Eva’s face he knew she’d recognized him. That forced him into recklessness: first, killing Rosa without any forethought; then, once he’d realized his mistake, getting hold of Alfie Meeks, someone he’d have done well to steer clear of. Admittedly the Wapping robbery came off, but he took a huge risk there, as well. The point was, he was running scared. His assumption must have been that Eva had reported his presence here to the police and that with Paris liberated now, word of the Sobel killing would have reached London.’

The chief inspector grunted.

‘I won’t quarrel with your reasoning, John,’ he said. ‘It makes good sense. But unfortunately in one respect the situation hasn’t changed, and that’s what’s worrying me now. Eva Belka is still the only witness who can convict him.’

There’d been a change in his tone of voice. Madden had picked it up.

‘What do you mean, Angus? Why do you say that?’