A Commonplace Killing (13 page)

“Perhaps you’d like to put something on, miss,” said Lucas. He set down a cup of tea in front of Frobisher, who looked
helplessly
at it as he addressed the girl.

“Evelyn,” he said, “these gentlemen are police officers. They say that a woman was found on a bomb-site on Sunday morning. They think it’s Lillian.”

“What was Lil doing on a bomb-site?”

He could not be sure, but Cooper thought he caught Evelyn suppress a smirk. This was not necessarily significant in itself – he had seen plenty of people laugh outright upon receiving bad news; shock took everyone differently – but there was
something
about the circumstances in which they all found
themselves
that aroused his suspicions.

“What’s your full name, miss?” asked Lucas, taking out his notebook.

“Evelyn Wilkes,” said Frobisher. “She’s Lillian’s cousin.”

A look of undeniable complicity passed between the two of them. It didn’t necessarily mean that they had murdered Lillian Frobisher, but it did mean something.

“Lil went off on Saturday,” said Evelyn.

“What time?”

“About half past six, quarter to seven.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“Down to her sister’s in Jaywick. She’s left us with her poor old mum, she has. Very nice, I must say.” She had been absent-mindedly patting her bathing costume all the while, as if expecting to find a packet of cigarettes there. She turned on Lucas, smiling expertly, eyes lighting upon the cigarette he had in his hand. “Oooh, I don’t suppose you have a spare cig, do you? I’m gasping for one, I am.”

Lucas obliged.

“Why did she go off?” he asked.

“Queuing for bread,” said Evelyn – very quickly. Frobisher had been about to say something at the same time, but now he sat down heavily and cradled the cup of tea in his hands. “She said she was done in and she’d been standing in queues all day and her whole life was rotten. That’s what she said. Rotten. And we could all go to hell. Even her poor old mum.”

“And neither of you were concerned when she failed to return home, or make any sort of contact?”

Evelyn shrugged, concentrating on the cigarette.

“We’re not on the telephone,” said Frobisher. “I assumed we’d have a postcard in a couple of days. Or that she’d come back when she’d calmed down.”

“I dunno,” said the girl. “She always seemed a bit mental to me.” She blew smoke at the ceiling, and wafted her hand about her head. Her nails were painted the same shade as the victim’s.

“Did she take any suitcase, clothes, with her?”

Frobisher put his head in his hands and groaned lightly.

“She was always flying off the handle.”

“Had she ever disappeared before?”

Evelyn plucked a piece of tobacco from her bottom lip.

“She’s left me to take care of her mother, that’s what she’s done,” she said.

“And did she say how long you’d have to look after your aunt for?”

A look of confusion crossed the girl’s brow.

Lucas persisted in his grave, flat voice.

“Mrs Frobisher’s mum – sorry – I thought you said you were a cousin.”

“No I never. I’m Lil’s friend.”

“I see.”

“Sorry. I must have been mistaken.” Frobisher had retreated into his cup of tea, all innocence, distraction. “Where were we? Did Mrs Frobisher take any luggage with her?”

Evelyn folded her arms across her exposed middle and smoked more thoughtfully.

“I dunno,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“What about a handbag?” said Lucas.

“Oh, she never goes anywhere without her handbag,” said Frobisher. “It’s got all our papers in it. She keeps it with her all the time.”

“It’s very good quality. Pigskin,” said Evelyn. “She liked everything to be nice. She looked after herself…”

“Her wedding ring was missing,” said Lucas.

Frobisher paled slightly.

“She threw it at me,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “During the row. I think it rolled under the bed.”

Cooper made a mental note to have Lucas find the wedding ring, while Frobisher started to moan like a wounded animal. Remorse was taking hold of him, but remorse is not evidence of guilt. What married man would not feel remorse on learning of the sudden death of his wife – even one guilty of her death?

“She was always threatening to sling her hook,” Evelyn was saying. “I’ve heard her say it a thousand times.”

“But it’s not something she’d ever done before?” persisted Lucas.

Frobisher thumped the arm of his chair with a clenched fist.

“No! No!” he said.

Evelyn looked at him with dull surprise.

“It’s like I said, she was a bit mental.” She ground out her cigarette on the edge of the fruit-bowl, and stood there pouting. Cooper couldn’t be sure, but he’d lay odds to evens the stub was tinged with the same shade of lipstick as the one they had found at the murder site.

“Husbands don’t seem to matter much these days,” Frobisher was saying. “Women have been encouraged to, you know, go their own way…”

The sound of the front door opening, a shout up the stairs, stopped him in his reverie.

“Oh my God,” he said, covering the top of his head with his hands. “Douglas. Oh God, it’s Douglas.” He looked up, blinking helplessly at Cooper. “What am I to say? What am I to tell him?” He was beseeching now. “I can’t – oh, I can’t do it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I simply can’t do it,” he said; and then: “Oh God. Oh God!”

T
here were times when it seemed to him as if it hadn’t happened, not in the way he remembered it. Memories came to him in improbable shards, distinct but unreal; the act of remembrance was inescapable, relentless. At other times it seemed to him that it was the only thing in his whole life that was real, such that he wondered if it was still going on
somewhere
outside of his head. Was this, he wondered, the missing part of him, the part that had been blasted out of him? How would he know when he could not remember how he had felt before, only that it was different from how he felt now? When he thought like this he worried that he was going round the twist. In dreams, men screamed at him from beneath the frozen sea, pleading for his help. He tried not to think about them when he had had a good night out, but he had no control over his thoughts, which seemed to come and go as they wished:
whenever
, wherever. He hadn’t had a good night out in a long while.

He hung up the green tweed swingback jacket in the
wardrobe
, admiring it hanging there. It was easily the best thing he had ever owned: no Burton’s ready-mades for him. You never knew what you’d find in the suitcases. That’s what made it such a good line. He lay down on the bed and stared up at the light bulb hanging from the dingy brown ceiling. He didn’t feel up to King’s Cross and suitcases today. On the way home he had considered going into Finsbury Park Station, boarding a train somewhere, anywhere, and climbing out of the compartment. Just to get a thrill. He’d done that. But today the smell of the diesel on the Seven Sisters Road had made him panic, and the crowds hanging about the entrance to the park had depressed him. Pasty-faced kids; drab bints in unmade-up faces and horrible clothes. What the hell had happened to this country anyway? As he had crossed over the road towards his lodgings he had wondered what it would be like to be hit by a bus.

He remembered flying. He had looked down at the debris of the ship and all the body parts scattered on the surface of the sea, the sea which was all lit up like Christmas and Bonfire Night: a great sheet of flame. His eyes were burning inside his head. When the smoke cleared he could see the whole aft section of the ship silhouetted against the orange sky. He didn’t remember hitting the water, but he remembered being in the water. It was oily and filled with the remnants of men. Screams drifted on the icy air. He was clutching a hatch-cover and
struggling
to keep ahead of the flames as bodies drifted past him. He had no idea how long he had floated like that before he had felt the nudge of a Carley float. He had hauled himself into it, sodden, half frozen, and lain in the bottom waiting to die.

He was shivering now in spite of the heat of the day. As a matter of fact, he didn’t feel too good. He swallowed hard against the sourness that was building in the back of his throat. He needed to sleep but he was afraid now, so he reckoned he would just lie there on the bed until it was time for the pubs to open, then he would go – and be well and truly lit up; just watch him. There was a pair of shoes he had yet to try which had come out of the same suitcase as the swingback jacket. They were a size too big for him, but he reckoned they’d do. On Monday he would take a few of the other things – a travelling clock, some cufflinks he didn’t care for – to a Jew fence on the Stroud Green Road that Nesta knew all about. He didn’t need the Resettlement Board. There were plenty of opportunities. He had floated on a burning sea for days. He’d get by. He would let Nesta take him to the fence but he wouldn’t give her anything. The dirty whore had made him feel sick in the café, with her throaty cackle and her stink, and the threepenny-bit ruse, just so’s she could look in the woman’s handbag.

He kicked off his shoes and let them fall on to the floor, and thought some more about the woman in the café. She had been alright. Lillian. A showy little piece: old, but then he always reckoned that the older bints didn’t give you any trouble, not like the younger ones. The older bints knew what a man wanted and were grateful for the attention: most of their husbands had been past it for years. And they don’t go with men just for what they can get out of them like the younger good-looking ones do; the ones who are after a meal-ticket, who’ll take all they can get. What was more, it was obvious that Lillian took care of herself; she was a looker. He reckoned she could have been a pin-up when she was younger. Not many women looked like the pin-ups, but she would’ve come close. He wouldn’t mind running into Lillian again.

He lay there and let images of girls dressed in nothing but little lacy knickers, with peachy thighs and rouged nipples, entertain him for a while. Afterwards he closed his eyes against the tears, letting them run down his face: this happened
sometimes
; he could not control it. In the dark he could sense the periscopes from the wolf packs of U-boats that were lying just beneath the surface of the water all around him. The water was pitchy, fog-bound, covered in ice. He lay there and waited, hardly daring to breathe. One time, please God, he would fall asleep and not wake up again.

T
heir dark baggy suits, dark ties and Homburgs made them instantly apparent to every villain in any pub they entered; as did their customary habit of glancing around the bar as they paused for a moment in the doorway before entering. Once a detective, always a detective: there was nothing you could do to conceal it. On this occasion neither of them recognised anyone, and no faces turned around to look them up and down.

“I’ll get these, Frank,” he said, as they approached the bar.

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Lucas. The DI went and sat at a table in a dingy corner of the saloon bar and lit a cigarette. Cooper stood at the counter, his eyes still roaming about the place. It was a habit he could not break.

The landlord broke off a conversation with another customer and jerked his head at Cooper without any pretence of civility.

“I’ll have two Johnnies, please.”

“You’ll be lucky.”

“White Horse?”

The landlord laughed.

“I’ve got gin or Bass,” he said. “Take your pick.”

Cooper opted for two Bass. He carried them through to Lucas and set them down on the table in the smoke-suffused corner.

“Apparently, it’s all there is. Sorry.”

Lucas lifted his glass up as if appreciating the way the light played upon the amber liquid, before raising it to his eyebrows in a salute.

“Cheers, sir.”

“Oh, Jim, please. We’re off duty.”

“Are we?”

“After a fashion.”

Lucas considered this for a moment before lifting his glass again.

“Cheers anyway,” he said, and he took a long draught.

“I see there’s a fight at Finsbury Park on Saturday,” Cooper said. “A couple of very talented coloured boys. Thought I might pop along.”

They both knew that this was unlikely to happen, but Lucas nodded encouragingly.

“I like a good fight,” he said, loyally.

“They’re taking on all comers.”

Lucas lit another cigarette, blew smoke at the ceiling. Cooper sighed and sipped his beer. Neither of them said anything for a few moments.

“There’s something about this case that I just can’t put my finger on, old man,” Cooper said, breaking the contemplative silence. “I find it hard to accept all that rot about the victim going to visit her sister in Jaywick Sands. And don’t – for god’s sake – don’t say that much is sticking out like Brighton Pier.”

Lucas set the glass down upon the table, and regarded it morosely.

“What does it matter?” he said.

“The victim’s sister is coming into HQ tomorrow morning. She’s coming down to make arrangements for the old lady. And that’s another oddity. Why do you suppose Wilkes and Frobisher didn’t telephone Jaywick? They might not have been concerned about the victim, but surely they would have wanted to know what arrangements were being made for the mother.” Lucas smoked impassively. Cooper sipped his beer. “Has the description of the handbag gone into the newspapers?” he asked after a short silence had elapsed. “Jolly good. Miss Wilkes had an uncommon acquaintance with its contents, didn’t she?” Cooper took another sip of his beer. “I don’t suppose we’ll see the three books of clothing coupons again, will we?”

Lucas stabbed the ashtray with the end of his cigarette and lit up another.

“Thought we were off duty,” he said, “sir.”

Cooper laughed lightly.

“Quite right, old man. Quite right.” They sat drinking. “So, what do you think of Arsenal’s chances next season?” Cooper asked when the silence had become awkward.

“Reckon that boy Bartram will be one to watch,” Lucas said, brightening considerably. The Arsenal first eleven was his abiding passion. “Good boy, Bartram – best of the current crop of goalies by far. Well, he’s the only one who punches the ball away, isn’t he? It’s all catches and kicks these days.”

Cooper murmured assent. He wasn’t really a follower of
football
– cricket was his game – but he had learned over the years that a passing knowledge was essential if you were to maintain any sort of relationship with the men you served alongside.

“The war put paid to good goalkeeping,” offered Cooper. This was something he was not qualified to comment upon, but he had heard Lucas say as much many times throughout the last season.

Lucas jabbed the table emphatically. “You’ve hit the nail on the head there, sir,” he said.

They let the conversation settle, finishing their beers.

“Obviously,” Cooper said after a while, “there’s been some domestic trouble. Some ill-feeling all around…”

Lucas turned his empty glass slowly.

“That’s not evidence,” he said. “That’s just marriage.”

“Caring for the old lady, day in day out – can’t have been much fun. The house is virtually a hovel. Looked at like that, it’s entirely understandable that she would want to run away – if that’s what she did. Then again, both he and Wilkes were keen to depict her as a neurotic, which goes some way to explaining why her disappearance didn’t concern them. Does Frobisher strike you as a drinker or a gambler? He claims never to have been out of a situation, yet he’s living as little more than a lodger in a bomb-site owned by his mother-in-law.”

“Sexually frustrated,” said Lucas.

“Sorry?”

“The victim. Sexually frustrated.”

Cooper nodded circumspectly. He tilted his empty glass towards the DI.

“Fancy another?” he said.

It was busier in the bar now: red-faced and sweating men, laughing, shouting, swilling, heaped on top of one another beneath a pall of cigarette smoke that was saturated with beery sourness and the mournful odour of gin; the sawdust at their feet was depleted in drink-sodden patches. While he waited to attract the barmaid’s attention, he thought some more about Frobisher, and the visit, earlier that evening, to the morgue so that the formal identification of the victim could be made. The trip supplied a first-rate opportunity to scrutinise at close
quarters
the reaction of his only suspect when confronted with his dead wife’s body. Cooper, like all detectives, proceeded on the assumption that he would know guilt the instant he glimpsed it: the truth was, sometimes you did and sometimes you didn’t; but you invariably convinced yourself either way that you had some sort of infallible ability to detect culpability: something telling in a stance, a gesture, a certain look, a change in the pattern of breathing.

Frobisher had cut a slight, shuffling figure in the gleam of the cold store, shrivelling before Cooper’s eyes in his customary way, until all that was left was the merest impression of a man diminished by the solid weight of grief. Embarrassed by yet another outpouring, Cooper had felt obliged to step aside and leave the wretched fellow to his lamentation while he examined the blank space of the tiled floor, despising himself as he assessed the sobs and imprecations. There can be no room for sentiment in a detective; as any one of them will tell you, the most innocent-seeming has often turned out to be the most blameworthy. Or was that something detectives tell one another in an attempt to assuage their consciences? And even if he had detected guilt, what did that really tell him? He had witnessed many times how the close relations of murder victims often appear to betray a guilty conscience: reproaching themselves for not having prevented the death of their loved one; feeling keenly the reprehensibility of a less than
satisfactory
final encounter. Regret was so closely aligned to guilt that it was often difficult even for the most seasoned detective to tell the difference between the two. He thought of the guilt he had felt at his own father’s passing; the self-censure that he had conducted on a daily basis since Marjorie had left him. She was not dead – she was merely with her people in Bristol, as far as he knew – but she had passed out of his life as surely as if she were dead, without ever knowing that he would love her until the end of time; and he would never forgive himself for that.

“Bass or gin?” asked the barmaid. She was a blonde,
large-breasted
, and was smiling at him.

“Two Bass, please.”

“Haven’t seen you in here before,” she said as she opened the bottles.

“I’m here with someone I work with. It’s his local.”

“What do you do, then?”

“We’re detectives.”

He could tell that she was impressed: as she poured the beers she was smiling even more at him. She wasn’t his type,
naturally
, but then she wasn’t obvious in the way of most barmaids. As a matter of fact, she seemed to him to be a very nice sort of girl.

“Like Humphrey Bogart in
The Maltese Falcon
?” she said.

“Not really…”

“I love Humphrey Bogart.”

“Actually, it’s quite dull most of the time.”

He had succeeded in disappointing yet another woman. She was still smiling at him as she handed over the beers and took his money, but now she was smiling in that professional way of barmaids everywhere, such that only a fool or a drunkard would be taken in. He returned her smile with a forced little effort of his own and retreated as fast as he could.

“Do you think the husband did it?” he said as he set down the beers.

Lucas drew fiercely on his cigarette.

“What, that thin streak of piss?” he said.

“There’s untapped frustration and fury there,” Cooper said, sipping on his beer. He wasn’t entirely convinced by his
argument
, but it is quite true that you are far more likely to be murdered by someone close to you than by a stranger. And it would certainly make things a lot simpler. “Crippen was a very softly spoken gent,” he said.

Lucas laughed.

“What about the girl?”

“Not a chance,” said the DI. “Women never strangle. They don’t have the strength.”

“She was wearing the same colour lipstick and nail varnish as the victim.”

“Nah… she’s his fancy woman, that’s all,” said Lucas.

“She’s half his age…”

“It’s the times we live in, sir. What can I say…?” Lucas drank half of his beer in one slow steady draught, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done. “Fact is, either you know who done it, or you don’t,” he said. “If you do, then the job’s simple: prove it. If you don’t, well… The thing of it is, guv, we don’t know.”

“Come on, old man. Nil desperandum. This morning we had no idea who the victim was…”

Lucas drank the rest of his beer and finished his cigarette. He stood up and began to put on his raincoat.

“I have to be getting home,” he said, “if the wife hasn’t locked me out. I was supposed to help her put up some curtains in the back bedroom. She’s been waiting for me to do it since we took down the blackout.” He sighed. “You did the right thing never marrying, sir.”

Cooper took another sip of his beer.

“The lady wouldn’t have me,” he said.

Lucas picked up his hat from the table and ran his thumb along the soft edge of the brim; he was looking down at Cooper with a slight frown. “Do me a favour, sir,” he said. “Try and get some kip. You look bloody awful, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Thanks.”

Lucas set his hat on his head and tipped it back with two fingers in a sort of salute.

“Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight, old man.”

Cooper let the last few drops of beer trickle down the back of his throat and then made his way out on to the street.

He walked over to the Frobisher house and leaned against a wall on the opposite corner and filled a pipe. It was still just about light, a crepuscular glow shimmering around the house skeletons; in the distance a train shrieked and groaned. He did not know what he was expecting, but some instinct had brought him there and sometimes instinct is all you have to go on and there is little point in ignoring it. He decided to stay until
satisfied
one way or another: it did not take long. He recognised them as soon as they turned on to the street. She was ginned up and laughing, her head flung back, dressed in a little veiled hat and a dress which, although understated, was too small for her, and clung to her hips and breasts lasciviously. He was making clumsy grabs at her waist and shoulders, pathetic,
drink-retarded
expressions of lust, which she deflected half-heartedly, laughing all the while. Cooper smoked his pipe and watched them make their way up the front path and in at the front door. It didn’t tell him anything he did not already suspect, but at least now he knew for sure.

Back at the flat, Mrs Oscar had restored everything to order. There was a neatly folded pile of clean shirts and collars; there was tea, milk and bread; his butter ration sat on the pantry shelf. On the shelf beneath the bathroom mirror there was a packet of razor blades. He could have wept with gratitude, but instead he made himself a piece of toast by way of celebration.

It was too late for music. He considered listening to the Egmont Overture, something exhilarating, life-affirming, but it would only have aroused something in him and he did not want to think or feel. He poured a whisky, tasted a bit, let it scald his throat, then topped up the glass with water. He swallowed the whole lot in one gulp and went and lay down on his bed in the darkened room. After a few moments of stillness he kicked off his shoes, pulled his tie over his head and tried to sleep.