the Liphook bobby’s advice she had left her son in the care of the elderly couple and hurried back with him, and though appalled to discover what had happened in her absence had rallied quickly, first helping to carry Bess into the sittingroom, then going in search of blankets. Left on his own to build up the fire, which by now was little more than embers, Madden had taken the opportunity while he was alone with Bess to speak firmly to her.
‘You know as well as I do how dangerous bullet wounds are. Whether you like it or not, you’re suffering from shock. You must lie quietly, and wait for the ambulance to arrive.’
She had smiled at him then.
‘That’s how I used to talk to the boys I picked up,’ she recalled. ‘During the war. They were all so young. They used to call me ma’am though I wasn’t much older than they were.’
He had sat beside her on the settee holding her hand, waiting until she dropped off to sleep before moving to the armchair.
‘I haven’t thanked you for saving my life,’ he had said. In truth he had been too busy saving hers as he’d knelt in the mingled blood and wine beside her body on the kitchen floor.
‘I thought I’d better.’ She’d responded with a smile. ‘I could hardly have faced Helen otherwise. Imagine having to tell her after all this time that I’d somehow mislaid her husband.’
For his own part, Madden had wanted nothing more than to talk to his wife: after his desperate fight with Ash and the explosion of violence that followed, the sound of her voice was what he craved above all. But he had refused both Billy’s offer and one made a little later by Sinclair to get a call put through to Highfield.
‘I don’t want to speak to Helen on the phone,’ he had told the chief inspector after contact had been re- established between them. She’ll only worry when she hears my croaking. Better I tell her about this in person.’
Unaware of the drama that had been played out while he was sitting helpless in his office in London, Sinclair had listened in shocked silence to Madden’s terse account of his life-and-death struggle with the killer. Most upsetting to the chief inspector had been the hoarse rasp which was all his old friend could manage by way of speech from his still tender throat.
‘I plan on spending Christmas in dignified silence,’ he had joked.
He had made no mention of his throbbing hand where the wire had left a welt on his palm painful to the touch. Urged by Billy to rest while he and Grace took care of things, he had settled in his chair and then sat for some time gazing at the mark. The agonized minutes when he had grappled with Ash were still raw in his memory: though wounded several times in the war, he had never come so close to death, and recalling the moment when he had lain stunned on the kitchen floor and seen the pistol pointing at him, a mask of scalded flesh behind it, he wondered if the image would ever leave him.
The body of Raymond Ash had been left to lie where it had fallen on the kitchen floor, covered by a dust sheet which Joe Grace had found in one of the rooms downstairs and which he’d tossed without ceremony over the killer’s corpse. While Madden and Billy had attended to Bess, he had taken it on himself to see to Eva, who, forgotten by all, had managed to drag herself up from the floor during the last terrifying seconds in the kitchen, but had then sat slumped at the table with her mouth hanging open, seemingly unaware of what was going on around her. Glancing up from his urgent task for a moment, Madden had been reminded of scenes he had witnessed in the past: of men in the aftermath of battle reduced to mere sleepwalkers; shadows of themselves.
It was Joe finally who had taken the girl by the elbow and lifted her to her feet. Surprisingly gentle in his manner, he had coaxed her towards the door.
‘You don’t want to stay here, Miss,’ he had murmured to her, softening his usual grating tone. ‘You go somewhere and lie down. We’ll bring you a cup of tea in a moment.’
As they’d moved slowly towards the door across the littered floor, one of Eva’s trailing feet had caught in the dust sheet, and without realizing it she had tugged the cover off Ash’s body, exposing his blistered face with the lips drawn back in a snarl. The sight brought a cry from her and she had turned away sharply. But Grace had steadied her, slipping an arm about her shoulders.
‘Now don’t you fret, Miss,’ he had said as her eyes welled up. ‘And don’t go shedding any tears either, not for him. Dirt’s what he was. No better than scum. And that’s God’s truth.’
EPILOGUE
‘So much for Raymond Ash, then. We can close the book on him. There’s nothing more outstanding. We have the diamonds and the money he stole from Silverman. I dare say Sobel’s heirs will claim the stones, if they can prove ownership, but that’s a problem for the French to handle. We’ve done our part.’
The chief inspector stretched luxuriously. He was enjoying the way the spring sunshine in Bennett’s office made the windows sparkle: windows which for almost five years had been scored by the crisscross lines of anti- blast tape but which now provided an uninterrupted view of the blue sky outside and the glittering river beneath it. Germany’s surrender had been announced three weeks earlier and the two men had shared in the joy felt by the whole nation.
‘I talked to Duval on the phone yesterday after we’d opened the safe-deposit box. They’re definitely Sobel’s diamonds: they match the stones on the list.’
‘And how much money was there?’ Bennett was curious.
‘Fifteen thousand pounds exactly. Of course the stones are worth a good deal more, but as an asking price it was just the sort of sum that was guaranteed to get Solly down to Wapping as fast his legs would carry him and no questions asked. He’d seen the list of diamonds that Alfie Meeks had shown him and he must have thought he was on to a good thing. Shrewd of Ash to think of that.’
The cache of money and jewels had been slow in coming to light. Although every bank in London had been asked to check its records for a Raymond Ash or a Henry Pratt, none had been found holding a safe-deposit box in either name. It had been a chance sighting of Ash more than a year earlier by a fellow salesman employed by the same city firm he had worked for that had provided the vital clue. Like others who had known him, the man had been questioned on several occasions, and over a period of months, as the police had cast their nets wider and wider in the search for leads, and he’d suddenly recalled seeing Ash entering a branch of Barclays bank in Cannon Street one day. The only reason the memory had stuck with him, however unreliably, was because he had heard at the office that same morning that his colleague had called in sick and realized he must be malingering. Contacted by Scotland Yard, the bank manager had tentatively identified Ash from a photograph as one of his customers, Charles Porter by name. Porter had kept a small account at the bank along with a safe-deposit box.
‘He opened the account in ’40 soon after he got here, using a false identity card.’ Details of the discovery had been given to Sinclair that morning by Billy Styles, who was still in charge of the investigation. They were easy to come by then, and he was the sort of man who would always need a safe place to hide what he didn’t want seen by others. Apart from the stones and the money, there were two sets of false Dutch papers in the box and an American passport which seems genuine and was probably stolen. He may have been planning to use it after the war.’
The chief inspector reflected.
‘Duval was pleased to hear about the jewels. It means they can close their investigation as well. But he still wishes we’d laid hands on Ash. Even though we might have had problems making a murder case stick, that wouldn’t have been the case with them. Not once they had Eva Belka’s statement. The French wanted his head, and given what he did at Fontainebleau I can’t say I blame them.’
He sat musing for a moment.
‘After more than forty years in this business I thought there was nothing in the way of human nature that could surprise me any longer,’ he went on. But Ash proved me wrong. What was it like to live inside his skin? I wish I knew the answer: if only for curiosity’s sake. But I’m afraid the question will go begging now.’
Bennett grunted.
‘By the way, I’ve some news you’ll be pleased to hear yourself. That report we sent to the commissioner regarding the work Poole did here and my recommendation that she be transferred to the CID has borne fruit.’ He slid a piece of paper across his blotter to Sinclair. ‘As you see, I’ve been authorized to inform the station commander at Bow Street that the transfer will take effect from next month. I’ve decided to bring her to the Yard to
