Anthem for Doomed Youth (14 page)

Afraid she might faint if she stooped over the body, she crouched and reached for his wrist. No pulse that she could feel. Should she try his neck? She simply couldn’t bring herself to touch it. The limp, chill heaviness of his arm told her all she needed, and more than she wanted, to know.

In glancing towards his neck, she noticed a discoloured area on the side of his head. Had he not kept his hair cropped so short, it would have been invisible. To steady
herself
, she shut her eyes and swallowed, her mouth dry, before she looked again, more closely. The skin was not broken, as far as she could make out, but was the skull dented?

Enough was enough!
She straightened and moved back, keeping her back against the unyielding hedge. A quick survey revealed nothing on which he could have knocked his head.

There was something else odd about the scene. What was it?

It was too neat. It dawned on Daisy that Harriman was laid out as carefully as if he was just waiting for a coffin.

‘What I don’t get, Chief,’ Tom rumbled, back in fine form after his early night, ‘is why you reckon it wasn’t another toff, one of their own kind, that did for ’em.’

‘Instinct, at least to start with. I dare say you could call my reasoning since then rationalisation. Mackinnon, Ernie, any thoughts on the subject?’

‘I keep coming back to the same question, sir,’ said Mackinnon. He seemed to have got over his disappointment that his brief exeat from the Yard, to Gerrards Cross, had merely confirmed their existing impressions of Halliday’s and Devine’s characters. ‘Why did he wait sae lang? The only link we’ve found between them is the war—’

‘And the pubs,’ Ernie muttered.

‘We’ll come back to the pubs in a minute,’ Alec promised.

‘Go on, Mackinnon.’

‘The Armistice was nearly eight years ago, and the records the War Office sent over show that all three victims were demobbed early in 1919. The colonel died a year sin’. Yon murtherer had nae less than six years to lay his plans. This suggests to me that he didna find it simple. A gentleman should hae had little difficulty discovering the whereabouts
of the three. E’en allowing for a delay until circumstances were just right, it doesna make sense.’

‘The colonel could have died in the meantime,’ Tom observed, ‘and he’d have lost his chance.’

‘Verra true.’

‘My own thinking exactly,’ Alec agreed. ‘A working man, on the other hand, might well have had considerable
difficulty
running them to earth, especially as he’d presumably have only his one day off a week to look and to make his arrangements. What’s your opinion, Cavett?’

The inspector shook his head. ‘That’s detective stuff, sir. I’m just a plain copper.’

‘An excellent organiser. Don’t think your efforts go unappreciated. Any other suggestions? Hold the pubs, Ernie!’

‘Just, where they were buried,’ said Tom. ‘You don’t get many nobs picnicking there on a Sunday. Queen Victoria may’ve called it “The People’s Forest,” but she was talking about East Enders, not West Enders.’

‘Dabbling in History now, are you, Sarge?’

‘That’s right, laddie. Seems to me my vocabulary is
currently
as extensive as is requisite for my profession.’

‘Cor blimey!’ said Ernie with mock admiration.

‘Anything else?’ Alec said impatiently. ‘If we’re agreed, more or less, that the murderer probably is not a member of high society, I’ve got to get moving or I’ll miss our volunteer at the Stepney station. Don’t worry, Ernie, we’ll consider the significance of the pubs when I get back.’

A Yard car, driven by a uniformed constable, delivered him to the Stepney police station at five to twelve. He told the man to wait. If the informant showed up and if his
information seemed worth following up, then the sooner the better.

He was shown to a small, dingy room with a scratched battered table and two equally hard-used chairs.

‘Tea, please,’ he requested. ‘For two.’ It would be
disgusting
, stewed and probably with milk and sugar included as a matter of course, but it might help set the man he’d come to see at ease.

‘Ratty’ was an apt word for both the face and the clothes of the small man who sidled in, preceding the PC with the mugs of tea.

‘Sit down,’ Alec invited.

‘I ain’t gonna stay but a minute.’

‘Sit down,’ Alec ordered.

He sat. The constable deposited one mug in front of him with a slight thud, slopping some on the table. The other he set more carefully before Alec.

‘Anything else, sir? I’ll be right outside the door, sir.’

‘Don’t bother.’ Hardly a necessary precaution!
Outweighed
two to one, the worst the rat could do to Alec was throw the tea at him. A guard at the door was quite likely to make him more reluctant to speak, not less.

‘I appreciate your coming forward to help us, Mr … ?’

‘No names, no pack-drill.’

‘As you will. But you came to give me a name, didn’t you?’

‘That’s different, innit. If you arst me, ’e oughter’ave come to you ’imself. I ain’t no coppers’ nark but three stiffs, that’s going a bit far, that is. ’Ere, you’re that detective chief inspector, aren’t you? Mr Fletcher? I ain’t talking to no one else.’

‘I’m DCI Fletcher. Would you like to see my card?’

‘Nah, that’s all right. I believe you; thousands wouldn’t.’ This was obviously a catchphrase, not a serious comment. ‘What I want to know is, what’s in it for me?’

‘Come, come, I thought you were being public-spirited, because you disapprove of murder. Triple murder, at any rate.’

‘That’s all very well for them as can afford it. I fought in the war, same as the next man, di’n’ I? But I’m down on me luck now, see?’

Alec had expected something of the sort. He took a ten-shilling note from the breast pocket of his jacket, laid it on the table and put his hand on it.

‘Blimey, guv, it’s worf a fiver at least!’ the man whined.

‘Ten bob down, and ten bob if your information turns out to be useful.’

‘But how—?’

‘You don’t have to give me your name.
If
you tell me something worth knowing, you can collect it here. They know your face now.’

His jaw dropped in alarm. ‘I ain’t done nuffing!’ he protested.

‘Nothing to earn a quid, certainly. Come on, let’s have it. I haven’t got all day. You’ll be down to a couple of half-crowns in a minute.’ He picked up the note and reached for his pocket.

‘Orright, orright, keep your ’air on! It’s this bloke in Tottenham, see, the landlord of the Barley Mow.’

The pub connection! Perhaps Piper had been right to keep harping on it
.

Alec knew from long experience that his face didn’t show his sudden alertness. The anonymous rat was twitching with anxiety.

‘That’s enough, innit? You can find him wivout me telling you his name? That way, if he asks, you can say you never ’eard it from me.’

Staring at him, Alec asked, ‘Just why would the landlord of a pub, even a crummy pot-house in Tottenham, confide in you, of all people?’

‘’Ere, you mind what you’re saying! The Barley Mow’s a respectable place.’

Alec raised sceptical eyebrows. ‘Which makes it the more surprising that he’d talk to you. Or that you’d be there in the first place, come to that.’

‘As it ’appens, a friend of mine was treating me to a pint yes’day midday. Just pulled off – come into some money, he had. Some other mates of his come in and he went to talk to them. Didn’t know ’em, did I, so while I was waiting for him, I pass the time of day with Mr Sh – with the landlord, like anyone might.’

Alec nodded. It all sounded like ‘corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.’ However, the man was
obviously
not a good liar, so it might be true. Most of it.

‘And this other bloke, he comes up just then to get a refill, like, and he passes a remark about them bodies in the Forest, them being just the other side of the Lea, which he just read about in the
Standard
. “Buried in a foxhole,” he says, “just like the war.”’

The army connection, as well!

‘Mr Shadd, he draws the bloke a couple of pints of Hertford’s bitter and he goes off, and I says, a mate of mine got buried in a fox’ole in France. Up to his neck in mud, he was. And Mr – the landlord says so was he, and whaddaya
know, turns out him and me mate was stuck in the same bloody trench! So then we was all pally, and he gives me a half on the house. I says, me mate ain’t got over it to this day. Them bodies in the Forest, at least they was dead when they was buried. Then he says, all mysterious like, “And I got a pretty good idea who croaked ’em.”’

‘“A pretty good idea!”’ Alec said in disgust, closing his hand over the ten-shilling note. ‘That’s not what you told them here yesterday.’

‘Fat lot of notice they’d’ve taken if I had!’ The rat’s shifty gaze was fixed anxiously on the money. ‘I’d’ve never’ve got to see you, would I, so I told ’em he said he knows. But I’m not gonna give no guff to the Yard. “A pretty good idea,” that’s what he said, and that’s God’s truth.’ He shrugged thin shoulders. ‘So maybe he’ll tell you he don’t know nuffing and never said he did. You can’t blame me.’

Sighing, Alec pushed the ten shillings across the table. Were it not for the double link with information they already possessed, he would have been inclined to dismiss the whole story. As it was, he’d have to follow up.

‘All right, we’ll see what he has to say. You can go.’ Sarcastically, he added, ‘Thank you for being a
public-spirited
citizen.’

‘You won’t forget to give this lot here the other ten bob?’

‘I won’t. If your tip is worth it. Now get out, before I have you arrested for extortion!’

The rat scuttled out.

Alec regarded with distaste the untouched mugs of tea, with milk scumming on top. Had the stuff been even remotely drinkable, he would have liked to wash the taste of the interview out of his mouth. Some coppers were not
fussy about using paid informants, but he had always tried to avoid them.

Just how respectable was the Barley Mow?
he wondered. Would it be better to turn up on his own, or was a show of force indicated? If the latter, plain-clothes or uniforms? He could ring up and ask …

He glanced at his watch. No time to set up anything complicated if he was to talk to the landlord before closing time. After that, Mr Shadd might go out, or he might settle down for a nap, in which case waking him would not be the best way to encourage him to cooperate. Alec didn’t want to have to wait until seven, opening hour on a Sunday evening.

Tom and Ernie would suit all occasions, he decided. Tom was big and Ernie, despite his lack of inches, could handle his fists. Both of them were also good at blending with their surroundings if they chose, rather than being immediately picked out as coppers.

He went out to the front desk and rang the Yard, asking for Mackinnon. After quickly explaining the situation, he said, ‘You stay there and hold the fort, with due deference to Inspector Cavett, of course. I want Piper to find out how to get to the Barley Mow, in Tottenham. Then he and Mr Tring are to meet me. We’ll pick them up on the Embankment. Got it?’

‘Aye, sir. The Barley Mow, Tottenham, and the Embankment entrance.’

‘Anything new at your end?’

‘Nothing that canna wait, sir.’

‘Good. I’m on my way.’

Sunday traffic was light. The police car stopped at the Embankment entrance to New Scotland Yard a couple of
minutes before the others appeared. Ernie, in his dark suit, looked like a City clerk on his day off. Tom was wearing one of his more subdued checks, blue and green, and could have been anything from a bookie to a commercial traveller to a country squire. He could change his speech to suit any witness, a big advantage in a case like this that involved people of all classes.

Alec thought of dismissing the driver. However, a
uniformed
officer might come in handy if the informant’s notion of a respectable pub turned out to be a haunt of shady characters like the rat himself and the mate who had ‘pulled off’ something remunerative – and probably illegal.

Also, if Ernie drove, he’d be less able to concentrate on discussing the case. He and Tom must hear the story Alec had just been told, and they hadn’t had time before he left the Yard for Stepney for more than the briefest report from Tom on his interviews in Hounslow last night and with Pelham’s nephew this morning.

Ernie hopped into the front of the car beside the driver and started to give him directions to the Barley Mow. Tom climbed in beside Alec in the back. The police vehicle was larger and sturdier than Alec’s Austin Chummy, their usual transport before the Yard had acquired its present fleet, but the springs still dipped a bit as Tom’s bulk settled on the seat. They headed north on the Victoria Embankment.

Turning to look backwards, Ernie grinned at Alec. ‘So, Chief, what did I say about pubs?’

‘You may be right. Or we may be on a pointless errand. My informant did not, in himself, inspire confidence.’

‘Then why are we on our way to Tottenham?’ Tom asked.

‘Because, besides the pub, the war also came into his tale.’

‘Ah.’ Tom was capable of expressing a wealth of meaning with his favourite monosyllable. This one meant he was interested.

‘Aha!’ said Ernie, his grin broadening. He took out his notebook and one of his ever-ready supply of pencils. ‘What did this unreliable chap have to say for himself, then?’

Alec told them. He included much of the ‘corroborative detail,’ still far from certain whether it enhanced or detracted from the credibility of the narrative.

When he finished, Tom said ‘Ah’ again, this time
signifying
satisfaction.

‘You’re our pub expert, Tom. You find it believable that the landlord would confide such a thing to a scruffy stranger?’

‘In those circumstances, yes. The chance conjunction—’

‘Whew!’ said Ernie.

‘The conjunction’ – Tom repeated with a severe look – ‘of talk of the murders and the war, on top of an uneasy conscience because he wasn’t rushing to the police with his information … Well, I can understand him blurting out what was at the top of his mind. He probably regretted it right away. But he’s probably not too worried because, by the sound of it, Chief, the laddie he told doesn’t exactly look like the sort who’s likely to seek out the company of coppers.’

‘Would it be a good idea, do you think, to make him worried?’

‘Well now.’ Tom stroked his moustache thoughtfully. ‘That I couldn’t rightly say without talking to him first.’

‘And so you shall.’ Alec had intended to talk to Shadd himself, but Tom was obviously a better choice. ‘I’ll see what the place looks like before I decide whether Ernie
and I should come in with you. Now, let’s go back over Pelham the nephew and this chap you saw in Hounslow last night.’

‘Peter Wensley, Major, retired. Pelham the uncle was his superior officer in South Africa, when he had just attained the rank of colonel and was feeling his oats. Major Wensley had married a Boer woman in Pretoria after our troops took the city. She was expecting his child. He assumed she was safe there, but he received a message that she had gone to visit relations in the veld. The whole family ended up in one of our concentration camps and were in dire straits. To cut a long story short, Pelham refused to let Wensley go to his wife’s rescue. She died.’