Authors: Laura Wilson

Stratton's War (25 page)

BOOK: Stratton's War

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When he emerged half an hour later, the first thing he saw was the rotund form of Sub-Divisional Inspector Roper, who’d arrived from Scotland Yard and was being given a tour of the damage by Constable Ballard. Laboriously, Stratton made his way over to them and stood waiting for Roper to finish whatever it was he was saying. Several minutes passed, during which Stratton’s eyes were glued to the thread of saliva that linked Roper’s pipe, which he’d removed from his mouth to wave in the air for emphasis, and his bottom lip. As Roper moved his hand, this glittering connection grew longer and longer until finally, it broke, leaving a shiny residue on his chin. Eventually, Roper stopped talking and turned towards him. ‘Were you looking for me?’

No, thought Stratton, I’m just standing here for a bet. Aloud, he said, ‘Yes, sir. DI Stratton, sir.’

‘Ah, good.’ Roper jammed the pipe back into his mouth and talked round it. ‘Bit of a mess.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Any news on DCI Lamb?’

‘None yet, sir,’ said Stratton, hoping this was correct.

‘Well, keep up the good work. Come up with anything on that stabbing yet?’

‘The gang fight? No, sir. It’s difficult to get the witnesses to talk.’ As you damn well know, he added to himself.

‘Well, keep at it. Things are bound to be a bit tricky for a few days, but we’ll muddle through it somehow. Been up to Eastcastle Street, have you? The church?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Feeling that something more was called for, Stratton added, ‘The body’s been there for a while, sir. We’ll know more when Dr Byrne’s had a look at it.’

‘Good. The thing is to keep going. You’ll be at Great Marlborough Street in a day or two.’

‘So I understand, sir.’

‘It’s bound to be rather hugger-mugger at first, but I’m sure you’ll bed down pretty quickly.’ After several more platitudes of this type, accompanied by a spot of pipe-jabbing, Roper departed.

After a suitable pause, Ballard asked, ‘How did it go at the church, sir?’

‘Dr Byrne’s turned into a comedian.’

‘Must be that Blitz spirit we’ve heard so much about,’ said Ballard, sardonically.

Stratton grinned. ‘Anything come in while I’ve been away?’

‘A couple of things, Sir. If you’ll follow me . . .’

After sorting out a few minor matters, Stratton went to find Constable Ricketts, who was standing guard over several tatty heaps of police files. ‘What’s left of Missing Persons?’

‘Here they are, Sir.’ Ricketts gestured at a small stack of papers, which were variously burnt, saturated, or ripped.

‘Is this it?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir. I was about to take them round to Great Marlborough Street. SDI Roper told us to use the hand ambulance, sir.’ As if on cue, Arliss appeared from behind a mound of rubble, pushing a glorified wheelbarrow in front of him.

‘Where did you find that?’

‘It was stored in the basement, sir.’

‘Good grief,’ said Stratton. ‘Well, you’d better get on with it, then,’ he added, gloomily. ‘Just try and put the Missing Persons stuff somewhere where I can find it, will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Stratton watched as Ricketts trundled off, Arliss walking beside him trying to hold the files steady and stopping every few yards to grab at torn, gritty pages that had loosed themselves from the pile and fluttered into the road. ‘Christ Almighty,’ he muttered, and went in search of the remains of his office.

Constable Bainbridge, aided by a policewoman, had managed to gather a few of the unspoilt bits and pieces in a desk drawer. Looking through them, Stratton was pleased to see that the photograph of Jenny and the kids which he kept tucked out of sight, was, miraculously, intact. A good omen, he thought - not so much as a crack in the glass. His notes on the girl who’d been assaulted at the nightclub were also unharmed. Thank heavens for small mercies, Stratton thought, as he shook them to get rid of the dust.

Seating himself on a couple of the wooden food boxes provided by Veeraswamy’s, he began making out a list of the nightclubbers he needed to interview. Halfway through, he stopped to light a cigarette and gazed at the chaos around him. It was all very well, he thought, for SDI Roper to make fatuous remarks about keeping going and muddling through, but he wasn’t the one who had to do it. And as for the corpse in the church . . . Stratton drew in a soothing lungful of smoke, and sighed deeply. I know bugger nothing, he thought. Bugger nothing, bugger all.

TWENTY-FIVE

Three days later, Stratton was settled - if you could call it that - in the DI’s office at Great Marlborough Street. DI Jones, who was a good sort, had been resigned, if not happy, about the fact that the room wasn’t really big enough for two desks, and that he had to perform a sort of hula dance in order to get to his chair. Stratton, who was at the end with the door, had just enough room to sit down, and, provided he didn’t want to push his chair back to relax, was reasonably comfortable. DCI Lamb had been sent home from hospital to convalesce, so there was no problem from that quarter, but Cudlipp had thoroughly upset the Marlborough Street desk sergeant by commandeering the tea-making facilities, and both men had a tendency to barge into the room unbidden to air their grievances.

The tea was worse than ever and the decreased sugar ration meant that there was no way to disguise the taste. Added to which, the window, shaken out of alignment by nearby explosions, was refusing to open, so that Stratton and Jones peered at their work, and sometimes each other, through a dense haze of cigarette smoke. The Maintenance Department, which consisted of two depressed-looking individuals, was currently occupied in poking rods down the blocked basement lavatory. So far, their efforts had resulted in a malodorous brownish lake about the pedestal, but nothing else. It had taken them three weeks, Jones told Stratton, to get even that far, so neither man was expecting fresh air any time soon.

Still, at least he was making some progress on the nightclub business. As he was leafing through his notes, comparing statements from various witnesses, the telephone rang. Snatching up the receiver, he felt a sense of amazement that, in spite of the chaos, the mechanism still worked. ‘Stratton.’

‘Byrne here.’

‘Good morning, Doctor.’

‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. We’ve had a lot to do, with the bomb fatalities. Most of the work is done by the attendants, of course, but it’s pretty complicated - human jigsaw puzzles.’ Byrne chuckled. Blimey, thought Stratton, another joke. Wonders will never cease.

‘Anyway,’ said the pathologist, ‘I’ve got some information for you. The body’s male, five feet ten inches, around fifty years old, well nourished, had a dental plate - not there now but you can see the marks - some fillings . . . Oh, and you were right about the lime, by the way. It’s builders’ lime, which is why the body’s in a relatively good condition.’

‘How long had it been there?’

‘It’s difficult to estimate, but I’d say between four and six months. The cause of death was a severe blow to the head. Triangular wounds to the top and the back . . . let’s see . . . seven pieces of bone, varying in size from half an inch to three inches, driven inwards, and there’s another triangular wound above the left eyebrow, bones of the nose broken . . . Quite a mess. Looks as if it’s been done with some sort of blunt instrument.’

‘A cosh?’

‘No. The marks suggest something broader, with a hard edge, straight - a spade, perhaps . . . what else?’ There was a pause while Byrne looked through his notes again. ‘Oh, yes. Nothing to say who he was, and no identifying marks on the remains of the clothes, I’m afraid. Hair’s brown - what’s left of it.’

‘What were they like?’

‘The clothes? Well, I’m no expert, but, judging from the bits we’ve got, I’d say they were poor stuff. Shoddy. There was no wristwatch, but we did find a scrap of handkerchief with a laundry mark on it.’

‘That’s better than nothing,’ said Stratton. ‘What is it?’

‘Wait a minute . . . here we are. CV89.’

‘CV - Charlie Victor?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Well, at least we can make a start.’

Stratton asked DI Jones if he could borrow someone for a couple of days to get cracking on the local laundries. Policewoman Gaines was a strapping girl with a pink-and-white complexion and a sensible manner. ‘Go back eight months,’ Stratton told her. ‘It shouldn’t take you very long.’

He found an address and telephone number for the building firm of McIntyre Brothers in the directory, and the manager, Mr Patterson, confirmed that yes, they had been responsible for some repair work at the premises of Our Lady and St. Peter in Eastcastle Street. Stratton explained that the church had been bombed, and blathered a bit about making routine checks before asking for more details. His questions elicited the fact that the work had been carried out at the beginning of March, which tallied with what Father Lampton had said, and information from the company’s time-sheets showed that a carpenter, Peter Eddowes, had been on the premises from the fourth of March until the twelfth, not including the tenth, which was a Sunday. Labourers Thomas Curran, Paddy Connelly and Jock McPherson had also been there, until the fourteenth, and the plasterer, Albert Drake, and his mate Jim Phillips had joined them on the eleventh and worked until the job was finished on the fifteenth.

‘Are these men still working for you?’

‘Yes, except for McPherson and Phillips. They left in June. Called up.’

‘Would they have kept their tools on the premises overnight while they were working?’

‘That’s the usual practice, yes. Provided there’s somewhere to leave them, of course.’

‘I see. I will need to speak to all of these men, Mr Patterson, in the next couple of days.’

‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ The manager sounded worried.

‘Oh, no,’ said Stratton. ‘As I said, it’s purely routine.’

He made an arrangement to visit McIntyre Brothers’ offices, which were in Cleveland Street near the Euston Road, at five o’clock, and thanked Mr Patterson for his help. He stared into space for a moment, thinking, then asked DI Jones if he knew anything about whitewash.

‘Not apart from sloshing it on the wall of the outside lav when I was a kid. What do you want to know?’

‘What it’s made of.’

‘Quicklime.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Glad to be of assistance.’ Jones grinned and went back to his work.

That couldn’t be it, then, thought Stratton. Funny, there’d been enough whitewashed buildings on the farm when he was growing up, but he never remembered anyone actually painting them . . . But builders’ lime, he thought, would be used in mortar, for laying bricks, so perhaps the labourers had used it. Maybe whoever buried the body had thought it was quicklime and hoped it would destroy the evidence. Stratton wondered why the man had been in the church in the first place - assuming, of course, that that was where he had died. The fact that the killer - or killers - had bashed his face in suggested that they didn’t want him identified. It had to be more than just a robbery, otherwise why kill him? Even if they hadn’t meant to kill, why go to all that trouble to bury him afterwards? It must have taken quite some doing to prise up those slabs from the floor - tough work for a man on his own, and time consuming, too. Stratton didn’t think a woman could have done it, even a big, healthy one like Policewoman Gaines. Here, he became momentarily diverted by the image of Gaines thundering down a hockey-pitch in a gym slip, sturdy legs pounding the grass and breasts bouncing . . .

Collecting his thoughts before they ran amok, Stratton returned to his notes about the assault in the nightclub. Policewoman Gaines made an appearance in person at quarter past four, looking pleased with herself. ‘Good news about the laundry mark, sir, I’ve managed to track it down.’

‘Well done.’

‘It’s from Venner’s Steam Laundry, sir, in Mayfair. The mark belongs to a man named Sir Neville Apse.’

‘Does it indeed?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve got an address for him here.’ Gaines handed him a piece of paper.

Dolphin Square. Stratton wondered whether Apse was a Member of Parliament, and, if so, why his disappearance hadn’t been reported in the newspapers. ‘Thank you, Miss Gaines.’

‘Anything else, sir?’

‘Not at the moment. But I may need you again in the next couple of days - provided DI Jones doesn’t object, of course.’