A Capital Crime (46 page)

‘She’s fine,’ said Stratton. ‘I hope that …’ he stalled, realising that he had no idea what former-Policewoman Gaines’s Christian name was, ‘your wife—’

‘Pauline, sir.’

‘Pauline wasn’t too put out.’

‘She understood, sir. If it had been Katy …’

Seeking to display some degree of knowledge about – and therefore interest in – Ballard’s family, Stratton said, ‘Walking now, is she?’

Ballard grinned. ‘Walking, talking, the lot. She’s three, sir.’

‘Yes, of course, she would be. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Actually, we’ve got another on the way. Only a few months, now.’

‘Congratulations. Another reason for me to buy you a drink when all this is over.’

As Stratton had suspected, it was more self-justification over Mary Dwyer – this time, her clothes had become caught around her neck in the struggle. After that, they got onto the two skeletons in the garden. Backhouse confirmed that the women had been killed sometime in forty-three or forty-four, while Edna was staying with her family in Sheffield. His account of the first, whom he remembered as being called Else Kircher or Kirchner, an Austrian – which explained the foreign fillings in the teeth – was markedly similar to his stories about the other prostitutes. The second – who turned out, as Ballard had suspected, to be May Drinkwater – obviously caused him more of a problem because, not being a whore, he couldn’t claim that she’d thrown herself at him. Instead, he recounted a story about luring her to the house on the pretext of treating her catarrh and getting her to inhale a mixture of Friar’s Balsam and gas.

‘I may have had intercourse at that time, but I’m not sure,’ he finished, frowning. ‘Or it might have been the other one. I can’t remember …’

How very convenient, thought Stratton. Hard on the heels of this came the thought that it was entirely possible that a man like Backhouse might
not
remember; at least, not clearly. His desires gratified, he’d dispose of the bodies and go on to the next … It occurred to him then, that for all Backhouse’s greater intelligence, he had just as little thought for the consequences of his actions as had Davies. ‘Were there others during that period?’ he asked.

‘Others?’ came the whisper.

‘Other women you killed at that time?’

Backhouse looked momentarily thoughtful, then said, ‘I don’t think so. That is, I can’t remember. If you say I did, then …’

In other words, thought Stratton, produce the evidence. ‘We found your souvenirs,’ he said. ‘A tobacco tin with four samples of pubic hair. Now, assuming you didn’t go around asking
living
women to help you with your collection’ – Backhouse looked outraged at this idea – ‘then you must have taken them from
dead
women.
Women you’d killed. A little something to remember them by, was it?’ Stratton deliberately kept his tone conversational, as if asking a perfectly reasonable question. ‘Those tender moments when you put a stocking round their necks
and strangled them and fucked them while you were doing it
?’

The eyes glittered for a moment behind the glasses, and then Backhouse put his head into his hands. His shoulders heaved, and a snorting noise told Stratton that he was crying. ‘There’s something,’ he spluttered, ‘but I can’t get it. It’s forming a picture and then my head hurts and it gets all jumbled up again. It doesn’t get clear, but there’s something …’

‘I’ll say there is,’ said Stratton, ignoring the tears. ‘There’s Muriel Davies.’

Backhouse sat up straight. Staring at Stratton, eyes wet and blurry behind the glasses, he seemed suddenly soft-bodied, as if, boneless, he’d assumed the shape of his chair.

‘Muriel?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Stratton. ‘Muriel. Muriel Davies. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten
her
. And for God’s sake, speak up.’

Backhouse cleared his throat. ‘There is something in my mind,’ he said, hesitantly, ‘about Mrs Davies, but I can’t quite remember …’

Chapter Seventy-One

‘If he tells us he can’t remember once more,’ said Stratton, ‘I’m going to knock his block off.’

‘I know what you mean, sir.’ The report having arrived from the police lab, they’d adjourned, and were sitting in the office.

‘The ones in the garden, fair enough,’ said Stratton. ‘It was a while ago. But he bloody well
does
remember about Muriel Davies. In fact, Mrs Carleton said that he was about to show her an old newspaper cutting about a court case he’d been involved in, but then he changed his mind. Was it with his clothes when he came in?’

‘They’re checking them now, sir. I’ll find out.’

‘He told her he’d been a witness. And he told her that his name was Davies, too.’ Mentioning Diana, Stratton was aware of concentrating on negative things, like not turning red or spilling his tea.

‘She was the one with him when you found him, wasn’t she?’ Ballard, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss, spoke in a neutral tone.

‘That’s right.’ Stratton did not enlarge on this. His feelings were too confused to enunciate, and besides, as far as Diana was concerned, he didn’t want to make himself feel even more of a fool than he did already. ‘You know,’ he said, partly to change the subject and partly because he was genuinely puzzled, ‘I don’t see how he could have gassed those women. May Drinkwater, fair enough – he said he’d got some sort of device, didn’t he? Presumably
he put it over her nose and she let him because she thought it was going to help with the catarrh. But with the others, how did he persuade them? If he’d just left the tap open, he’d have been overcome himself, wouldn’t he?’

‘Perhaps if he’d opened a window …’

‘But then the gas would have been dispelled. And surely they’d have smelt a rat if he’d suddenly stuck his head out of the window – unless he’d made some excuse, I suppose. But it’s a bit odd.’

‘Perhaps he persuaded them as some sort of game. We found tubing in the flat, remember, sir?’

‘Well, he certainly didn’t tie them up – there weren’t any marks.’

‘Mary Dwyer had her wrists tied in front of her with a handkerchief –
that
could have been part of a game – and McKinnon must have been pretty drunk, judging by the lab reports, so perhaps she didn’t realise what was happening to her.’

‘And Iris Manning was pregnant,’ concluded Stratton. ‘Backhouse denied offering to help her get rid of the baby, but if he had, he might have said the gas was to knock her out while he did it. That makes sense.’

‘He might have done that to Muriel Davies too, sir.’

‘It’s possible. We didn’t find anything like that device he mentioned, but he could easily have thrown it away.’

Stratton pondered this for a moment before Ballard spoke again. ‘Last night, sir, when you telephoned, you said you were going to follow someone up … Did you find them, sir?’ The sergeant’s gaze was so penetrating that, for a horrible moment, Stratton thought the man must be clairvoyant and connected this to his earlier comments about Diana’s statement.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I had an idea they’d be somewhere near Victoria, but …’ He shrugged, hoping it looked realistically off-hand. ‘Anyway, turns out it didn’t matter.’

Ballard looked at him carefully, a bit too much like a man who realised he’d been warned off for Stratton’s liking, but all he said was, ‘True enough, sir,’ then bent his head to the pile of paper
in front of him. ‘There’s a whole list of stuff from the suitcase we fetched from the Rowton House at King’s Cross, sir. Ration books – his wife’s as well – identity card, ticket for the doss house, seven nights’ accommodation … That’s interesting. When Canning went to fetch the case they told him that he’d only stayed for one.’

‘Probably wandering about trying to pick up women,’ said Stratton. ‘What else?’

‘Rent book for Paradise Street, marriage certificate, three pawn tickets, St John’s Ambulance badge, two first aid certificates, gloves, scarf, handkerchief – all the usual men’s clothes, and there’s women’s stuff here, too. Nightdress, petticoat, necklace, lipstick …

‘Mrs Carleton said he’d offered her some clothes. Said they’d belonged to his wife.’

‘Charming. There’s a whole list of medicines, too.’

‘There would be.’

Ballard leafed through the pages. ‘Lab report’s right at the end, sir. Blimey …’

‘What is it?’

‘“I have examined package no. 4,’ read Ballard ‘and found on the trousers an area of seminal staining containing spermatozoa on the inside of the right fly opening near the bottom … spot of seminal staining on the lining of the left pocket … On the front flap of the shirt there are extensive areas of staining, semen containing spermatozoa was identified … On the vest there was an area of old staining with semen, the other vest shows comparatively extensive areas of staining … On another pair of trousers … On the plimsolls there were found some spots and smears of seminal staining …”’

‘All right,’ said Stratton, utterly revolted. ‘I’ve got the picture. Is there anything else?’

‘“Awaiting the clothes worn by Backhouse on arrest …”’

‘They’ll probably be covered in wank-stains as well.’

‘. . . and the comparisons with the samples found in the women show that it’s possible they could be from the same source.’

‘Anything on the pubic hair?’

‘It’s a bit inconclusive, sir. It says here, “It should be pointed out that while it is possible to say that two samples of hair are dissimilar, it is not possible to say that a sample of normal hair must have come from the same source, since the range of structural and colour variations of human hair is limited and there are millions of people having hair within this range of variation.’”

Stratton sighed. ‘Tell us something we don’t know. Any similarities, then?’

Ballard frowned. ‘It says that one of them might be from Mrs Backhouse, but there are no matches with the women in the alcove. So, if two of the samples turn out to be from the women in the garden – assuming the stuff they picked out of the earth isn’t too far gone to test – that still leaves one unaccounted for …’

‘Muriel Davies.’

‘That’s what I was thinking, sir. Are we going after an exhumation order?’

‘Let’s see what Backhouse says about her first. Then I’ll talk to Lamb.’

When they returned to the interview room, Backhouse had straightened up, and looked at them with something like defiance on his face. Stratton knew immediately that they’d missed their chance.

‘Muriel Davies,’ he said, firmly. ‘Tell me.’

There were no ticks of the mouth now, no fussing with his glasses, no blinking. Backhouse looked him squarely in the eye and said, in a clear voice, ‘If you can prove it, Inspector, I’ll admit it.’

Chapter Seventy-Two

Two days later, shivering in the chilly dawn air amongst Kensal Rise cemetery’s thickets of marble and stone, surrounded on all sides by crosses and angels sprouting at awkward angles from the earth, Stratton and Ballard stood beside McNally and another, older, pathologist, Dr Tindall – who was to perform the second postmortem – and watched the men digging.

It was five a.m., but despite the closed cemetery gates and the barricades and constables outside, there were dozens of reporters and photographers with stepladders lining the road. At least – apart from the odd curious early riser – the public weren’t there, thought Stratton, wondering, not for the first time, why on earth people came to gawp at this sort of thing. The idea of being part of something, perhaps, in the sense of bearing witness, or hoping, misguidedly, for a glimpse of the killer – although they must, having followed the case in the papers, already know what he looked like.

Stratton saw that the newest graves were blanketed with bunches of flowers. The older ones had only a single bunch, wilting and apologetic, and the oldest of all had ivy and ragged grass. There hadn’t been anything in front of the plain stone slab that marked Muriel and Judy’s grave, now removed: too painful, perhaps, for the family to visit. Or maybe, like him, they didn’t see the point. He’d never visited the plot where Jenny’s ashes were scattered and nor, as far as he knew, had Monica or Pete. It was just a place: Jenny wasn’t there.

The coffin being raised, the earth was brushed away to reveal the brass plaque. The original undertaker, McLeavy, stepped forward and nodded. ‘That’s the one.’ The dark boards – elm, Stratton guessed – looked in good condition, with the lid only slightly warped. ‘We’ll need to raise the lid a little,’ said Tindall. ‘For the release of gases.’

The diggers unscrewed the lid and pushed it to one side. There was no smell, at least not from where he was standing, and Stratton could see nothing but darkness within. There was a short, solemn pause, as though an invisible vicar had requested a silent commemoration, and then Tindall nodded, satisfied. The lid was screwed back into place, the coffin lifted up, and the cortège, led with sombre authority by McLeavy, moved off in a hail of clicking camera shutters to the waiting van.

At the mortuary Higgs removed the coffin lid, revealing stalactites of white mould hanging down from the inside. The same white mould covered the shroud, through which the outlines of the two bodies – Muriel and the baby, Judy, who lay on her stomach – were clearly visible. Stratton, who’d placed his handkerchief over his nose in readiness, was surprised at how little they added to the usual mortuary smell of decay and disinfectant. Nevertheless, he was aware of a heaviness in the air, as though a thick cloth had been pulled around him, close and stifling. He stared down at the runnels in the concrete floor until a sudden, vivid memory of the country abattoir where his father had occasionally taken him as a boy when they were delivering stock, with its sluiced tides of blood and offal, jabbed him, making him blink and jerk his head up again.