Hell Is Always Today (10 page)

The Gunner came awake slowly, yawned and stretched his arms. For a moment he stared blankly around him, wondering where he was and then he remembered.

It was quiet there in the comfortable old living-room—so quiet that he could hear the clock ticking and the soft patter of the rain as it drifted against the window.

The blanket with which Jenny Crowther had covered him had slipped down to his knees. He touched it gently for a moment, a smile on his mouth, then got to his feet and stretched again. The fire was almost out. He dropped to one knee, raked the ashes away and added a little of the kindling he found in the coal scuttle. He waited until the flames were dancing and then went into the kitchen.

He filled the kettle, lit the gas stove and helped himself to a cigarette from a packet he found on the table. He went to the window and peered out into the rain-swept yard and behind him, Jenny Crowther said, “Never stops, does it?”

She wore an old bathrobe and the black hair hung straight on either side of a face that was clear and shining and without a line.

“No need to ask you if you slept well,” he said. “You look as if they’ve just turned you out at the mint.”

She smiled right down to her toes and crossed to the window, yawning slightly. “As a matter of fact I slept better than I have done for weeks. I can’t understand it.”

“That’s because I was here, darlin’,” he quipped. “Guarding the door like some faithful old hound.”

“There could be something in that,” she said soberly.

There was an awkward pause. It was as if neither of them could think of the right thing to say next, as if out of some inner knowledge they both knew that they had walked a little further towards the edge of some quiet place where anything might happen.

She swilled out the teapot and reached for the caddy and the Gunner chuckled. “Sunday morning—used to be my favourite day of the week. You could smell the bacon frying all the way up to the bedroom.”

“Who was doing the cooking?”

“My Aunt Mary of course.” He tried to look hurt. “What kind of a bloke do you think I am? The sort that keeps stray birds around the place?”

“I’m glad you put that in the plural. Very honest of you.”

On impulse, he moved in behind her and slid his arms about her waist, pulling her softness against him, aware from the feel of her that beneath the bathrobe she very probably had nothing on.

“Two and a half bleeding years in the nick. I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

“Well, you needn’t think you’re going to take it out on me.”

She turned to glance over her shoulder, smiling and then the smile faded and she turned completely, putting a hand up to his face.

“Oh, Gunner, you’re a daft devil, aren’t you?”

His hands cupped her rear lightly and he dropped his head until his forehead rested against hers. For some reason he felt like crying, all choked up so that he couldn’t speak, just like being a kid again, uncertain in a cold world.

“Don’t rub it in, lass.”

She tilted his chin and kissed him very gently on the mouth. He pushed her away firmly and held her off, a hand on each shoulder. What he said next surprised even himself.

“None of that now. You don’t want to be mixed up with a bloke like me. Nothing but a load of trouble. I’ll have a cup of tea and something to eat and then I’ll be off. You and the old girl had better forget you ever saw me.”

“Why don’t you shut up?” she said. “Go and sit down by the fire and I’ll bring the tea in.”

He sat in the easy chair and watched her arrange the tray with a woman’s instinctive neatness and pour tea into two cups. “What about the old girl?”

“She’ll be hard on till noon,” Jenny said. “Needs plenty of rest at her age.”

He sat there drinking his tea, staring into the fire and she said softly, “What would you do then if this was an ordinary Sunday?”

“In the nick?” He chuckled grimly. “Oh, you get quite a choice. You can go to the services in the prison chapel morning and evening—plenty of the lads do that, just to get out of their cells. Otherwise you’re locked in all day.”

“What do you do?”

“Read, think. If you’re in a cell with someone else you can always play chess, things like that. If you’re at the right stage in your sentence they let you out on to the landing for an hour or so in the evening to play table tennis or watch television.”

She shook her head. “What a waste.”

He grinned and said with a return to his old flippancy, “Oh, I don’t know. What would I be doing Sundays on the outside? Spend the morning in the kip. Get up for three or four pints at the local and back in time for roast beef, Yorkshire pud and two veg. I’d have a snooze after that, work me way through the papers in the afternoon and watch the telly in the evening. What a bloody bore.”

“Depends who you’re doing it with,” she suggested.

“You’ve got a point there. Could put an entirely different complexion on the morning in the kip for a start.”

She put down her cup and leaned forward. “Why not go back, Gunner? There’s nowhere to run to. The longer you leave it, the worse it will be.”

“I could lose all my remission,” he said. “That would mean another two and a half years.”

“Are you certain you’d lose all of it?”

“I don’t know. You have to take your chance on that sort of thing.” He grinned. “Could have been back now if things had turned out differently last night.”

“What do you mean?” He told her about Doreen and what had happened at her flat. When he finished, Jenny shook her head. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I could make a suggestion. Two and a half years is a hell of a long time.”

She examined him critically and frowned. “You know I hadn’t realised it before, but you could do with a damned good scrub. You’ll find a bathroom at the head of the stairs and there’s plenty of hot water. Go on. I’ll make you some breakfast while you’re in the tub.”

“All right then, all right,” he said good-humouredly as she pulled him to his feet and pushed him through the door.

But he wasn’t smiling when he went upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom.
Two and a half years
. The thought of it sent a wave of coldness through him, of sudden, abject despair. If only that stupid screw hadn’t decided to sneak off to the canteen. If only he hadn’t tried to touch up the staff nurse. But that was the trouble with life, wasn’t it? Just one big series of ifs.

He was just finishing dressing when she knocked on the door and said softly, “Come into my room when you’ve finished, Gunner—it’s the next door. I’ve got some clean clothes for you.”

When he went into her room she was standing at the end of the bed bending over a suit which she had laid out. “My father’s,” she said. “Just about the right fit I should say.”

“I can’t take that, darlin’,” the Gunner told her. “If the coppers catch me in gear like that they’ll want to know where it came from.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If I go back it’s got to be just the way I looked when I turned up here last night otherwise they’ll want to know where I’ve been and who’s been helping me.”

The room was strangely familiar and he looked around him and grinned. “You want to get a curtain for that window, darlin’. When I was in the loft last night I could see right in. Quite a view. One I’m not likely to forget in a hurry.” He sighed and said in a whisper, “I wonder how many times I’ll think of that during the next two and a half years.”

“Look at me, Gunner,” she said softly.

When he turned she was standing at the end of the bed. She was quite naked, her bathrobe on the floor at her feet. The Gunner was turned to stone. She was so lovely it hurt. She just stood there looking at him calmly, waiting for him to make a move, the hair like a dark curtain sweeping down until it gently brushed against the tips of the firm breasts.

He went towards her slowly, reaching out to touch like a blind man. Her perfume filled his nostrils and a kind of hoarse sob welled up in his throat.

He held her tightly in his arms, his head buried against her shoulder and she smoothed his hair and kissed him gently as a mother might a child. “It’s all right, Gunner. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Gunner Doyle, the great lover
. He was like some kid presented with the real thing for the first time. His hands were shaking so much that she had to unbutton his shirt and trousers for him. But afterwards it was fine, better than he had ever known it before. He melted into her flesh as she pulled him close and carried him away into warm, aching darkness.

Afterwards—a long time afterwards, or so it seemed—the telephone started to ring. “I’d better see who it is.” She slipped from beneath the sheets, and reached for her bathrobe.

The door closed softly behind her and the Gunner got up and started to dress. He was fastening his belt when the door opened again and she stood there staring at him looking white and for the first time since he had known her, frightened.

He took her by the shoulders. “What’s up?”

“It was a man,” she said in a strained voice. “A man on the phone. He said to tell you to get out fast. That the police would be here any time.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” she said and cracked suddenly. “Oh, Gunner, what are we going to do?”

“You stay put, darlin’, and carry on as normal,” he said, going to the bed and pulling on the boots she had given him. “I’m the only one who has to do anything.”

He yanked the sweater over his head and she grabbed his arm. “Give yourself up, Gunner.”

“First things first, darlin’. I’ve got to get out of here and so far away that the coppers don’t have a hope of connecting me with you and the old girl.”

She looked up into his face for a moment then turned to the dressing-table and opened her handbag. She took out a handful of loose coins and three pound notes.

When she held the money out to him he tried to protest, but she shook her head. “Better take it, just in case you decide to keep on running. I’m not holding you to anything.” She went to the wardrobe and produced an old single-breasted raincoat. “And this. It was my father’s. No use to him now.”

Suddenly she was the tough Yorkshire lass again, rough, competent, completely unsentimental. “Now you’d better get out of here.”

He pulled on the coat and she led the way into the passageway. The Gunner started towards the stairs and she jerked his sleeve. “I’ve got a better way.”

He followed her up another flight of stairs, passing several doors which obviously led to upper rooms. At the top, they were confronted by a heavier door bolted on the inside and protected by a sheet of iron against burglars.

She eased back the bolts and the door swung open in the wind giving him a view of a flat roof between two high gables. There was a rail at one end and on the other side of it the roof sloped to the yard below.

“If you scramble over the gable end,” she said, pointing to the left, “you can slide down the other side to the flat roof of a metalworks next door. Nothing to it for you—I’ve done it myself when I was a kid. You’ll find a fire escape that’ll take you all the way down into the next alley.”

He stared at her dumbly, rain blowing in through the open doorway, unable to think of anything to say. She gave him a sudden fierce push that sent him out into the open.

“Go on—get moving, you bloody fool,” she said and slammed the door.

He had never felt so utterly desolate, so completely cut-off from everything in his life. It was as if he had left everything worth having back there behind that iron door and there was nothing he could do about it. Not a damned thing.

He followed her instructions to the letter and a minute or so later hurried along the alley on the far side and turned into the street at the end.

He kept on walking in a kind of daze, his mind elsewhere, turning from one street into the other in the heavy rain. About ten minutes later he found himself on the edge of Jubilee Park. He went in through a corner entrance, past the enigmatic statue of good Queen Victoria, orb in one hand and sceptre in the other, and walked aimlessly into the heart of the park.

He didn’t see a living soul which was hardly surprising considering the weather. Finally he came to an old folks’ pavilion, the kind of place where pensioners congregated on calmer days to gossip and play dominos. The door was locked, but a bench beside it was partially sheltered from the rain by an overhanging roof. He slumped down, hands thrust deep into the pockets of the old raincoat and stared into the grey curtain. He was alone in a dead world. Completely and finally alone.

When Faulkner got out of the taxi there was no sign of Nick Miller. Faulkner was surprised, but hardly in a mood to shed tears over the matter. He hurried up to his flat, unlocked the door and went in. The fire had almost gone out and he took off his wet raincoat, got down on one knee and started to replenish it carefully. As the flames started to flicker into life the door bell sounded.

He opened it, expecting Miller, and found Joanna and Jack Morgan standing there.

“Surprise, surprise,” Faulkner said.

“Cut it out, Bruno,” Morgan told him. “We had a visit from Nick Miller early this morning and what he told us wasn’t funny.”

Faulkner took Joanna’s coat. “This whole thing is beginning to annoy me and there’s a nasty hint of worse to come. Visions of a lonely cell with two hard-faced screws, the parson snivelling at my side as I take that last walk along the corridor to the execution room.”

“You should read the papers more often. They aren’t hanging murderers this season.”

“What a shame. No romance in anything these days, is there?”

Joanna pulled him round to face her. “Can’t you be serious for once? You’re in real trouble. What on earth possessed you to bring that girl back here?”

“So you know about that, do you?”

“Miller told us, but I’d still like to hear about it from you,” Morgan said. “After all, I am your lawyer.”

“And that’s a damned sinister way of putting it for a start.”

The door bell rang sharply. In the silence that followed, Faulkner grinned. “Someone I’ve been expecting. Excuse me a moment.”

When Miller left the judo centre he was feeling strangely elated. At the best of times police work is eighty per cent instinct—a special faculty that comes from years of handling every kind of trouble. In this present case his intuition told him that Faulkner had something to hide, whatever Mallory’s opinion might be. The real difficulty was going to be in digging it out.

He sat in the car for a while, smoking a cigarette and thinking about it. Faulkner was a highly intelligent man and something of a natural actor. He enjoyed putting on a show and being at the centre of things. His weakness obviously lay in his disposition to sudden, irrational violence, to a complete emotional turnabout during which he lost all control or at least that’s what his past history seemed to indicate. If only he could be pushed over the edge…

Miller was filled with a kind of restless excitement at the prospect of the encounter to come and that was no good at all. He parked the car beside the corner gate of Jubilee Park, buttoned his trenchcoat up to the chin and went for a walk.

He didn’t mind the heavy rain—rather liked it, in fact. It somehow seemed to hold him safe in a small private world in which he was free to think without distraction. He walked aimlessly for twenty minutes or so, turning from one path to another, not really seeing very much, his mind concentrated on one thing.

If he had been a little more alert he would have noticed the figure of a man disappearing fast round the side of the old folks’ shelter as he approached, but he didn’t and the Gunner watched him go, heart in mouth, from behind a rhododendron bush.

When Miller walked in to the flat and found Joanna Hartmann and Morgan standing by the fire he wasn’t in the least put out for their presence suited him very well indeed.

He smiled and nodded to the woman as he unbuttoned his damp raincoat. “We seem to have seen rather a lot of each other during the past twenty-four hours.”

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be here?” she demanded coldly.

“Good heavens no. I’ve just got one or two loose ends to tie up with Mr. Faulkner. Shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

“I understand you’ve already asked him a great many questions,” Morgan said, “and now you intend to ask some more. I think we have a right to know where we stand in this matter.”

“Are you asking me as his legal representative?”

“Naturally.”

“Quite unnecessary, I assure you.” Miller lied smoothly. “I’m simply asking him to help me with my enquiries, that’s all. He isn’t the only one involved.”

“I’m happy to hear it.”

“Shut up, Jack, there’s a good chap,” Faulkner cut in. “If you’ve anything to say to me, then get on with it, Miller. The sooner this damned thing is cleared up, the sooner I can get back to work.”

“Fair enough.” Miller moved towards the statues. “In a way we have a parallel problem. I understand you started five weeks ago with one figure. In a manner of speaking, so did I.”

“A major difference if I might point it out,” Faulkner said. “You now have five while I only have four.”

“But you were thinking of adding a fifth, weren’t you?”

“Which is why I paid Grace Packard to pose for me, but it didn’t work.” Faulkner shook his head. “No, the damned thing is going to be cast as you see it now for good or ill.”

“I see.” Miller turned from the statues briskly. “One or two more questions if you don’t mind. Perhaps you’d rather I put them to you in private.”

“I’ve nothing to hide.”

“As you like. I’d just like to go over things again briefly. Mr. Morgan called for you about eight?”

“That’s right.”

“What were you doing?”

“Sleeping. I’d worked non-stop on the fourth figure in the group for something like thirty hours. When it was finished I took the telephone off the hook and lay on the bed.”

“And you were awakened by Mr. Morgan?”

“That’s it.”

“And then went to The King’s Arms where you met Grace Packard? You’re quite positive you hadn’t met her previously?”

“What are you trying to suggest?” Joanna interrupted angrily.

“You don’t need to answer that, Bruno,” Morgan said.

“What in the hell are you both trying to do…hang me? Why shouldn’t I answer it? I’ve got nothing to hide. I should think Harry Meadows, the landlord, would be the best proof of that. As I recall, I had to ask him who she was. If you must know I thought she was on the game. I wasn’t looking forward to the party and I thought she might liven things up.”

“And you met her boy friend on the way out?”

“That’s it. He took a swing at me so I had to put him on his back.”

“Rather neatly according to the landlord. What did you use…judo?”

“Aikido.”

“I understand there was also some trouble at the party with Mr. Marlowe?”

Faulkner shrugged. “I wouldn’t have called it trouble exactly. Frank isn’t the physical type.”

“But you are—or so it would seem?”

“What are you trying to prove?” Joanna demanded, moving to Faulkner’s side.

“Just trying to get at the facts,” Miller said.

Morgan moved forward a step. “I’d say you were aiming at rather more than that. You don’t have to put up with this, Bruno.”

“Oh, but I do.” Faulkner grinned. “It’s beginning to get rather interesting. All right, Miller, I’ve an uncontrollable temper, I’m egotistical, aggressive and when people annoy me I tend to hit them. They even sent me to prison for it once. Common assault—the respectable kind, by the way, not the nasty sexual variety.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Somehow I thought you might be.”

“You brought the girl back here to pose for you and nothing else?”

“You know when she got here, you know when she left. There wasn’t time for anything else.”

“Can you remember what you talked about?”

“There wasn’t much time for conversation either. I told her to strip and get up on the platform. Then I saw to the fire and poured myself a drink. As soon as she got up there I knew it was no good. I told her to get dressed and gave her a ten-pound note.”

“There was no sign of it in her handbag.”

“She slipped it into her stocking top. Made a crack about it being the safest place.”

“It was nowhere on her person and she’s been examined thoroughly.”

“All right, so the murderer took it.”

Miller decided to keep the information that the girl had had intercourse just before her death to himself for a moment. “There was no question of any sexual assault so how would the murderer have known where it was?”

There was a heavy silence. He allowed it to hang there for a moment and continued, “You’re quite sure that you and the girl didn’t have an argument before she left?”

Faulkner laughed harshly. “If you mean did I blow my top, break her neck with one devastating karate chop and carry her down the back stairs into the night because she refused my wicked way with her, no. If I’d wanted her to stay the night she’d have stayed and not for any ten quid either. She came cheaper than that or I miss my guess.”

“I understand she was found in Dob Court, Sergeant?” Morgan said.

“That’s right.”

“And are you seriously suggesting that Mr. Faulkner killed the girl here, carted her downstairs and carried her all the way because that’s what he would have to have done. I think I should point out that he doesn’t own a car.”

“They took my licence away last year,” Faulkner admitted amiably. “Driving under the influence.”

“But you did go out after the girl left?”

“To the coffee stall in Regent Square.” Faulkner made no attempt to deny it. “I even said hello to the local bobby. I often do. No class barriers for me.”

“He’s already told us that. It was only five or ten minutes later that he found Grace Packard’s body. You left Joanna’s gloves on the counter. The proprietor asked me to pass them on.”

Miller produced the black and white gloves and handed them to Joanna Hartmann who frowned in puzzlement. “But these aren’t mine.”

“They’re Grace Packard’s,” Faulkner said. “I pulled them out of my pocket when I was looking for some change, as you very well know, Miller. I must have left them on the counter.”

“The man at the coffee stall confirms that. Only one difference. Apparently when he commented on them, you said they belonged to Joanna.”

Joanna Hartmann looked shocked, but Faulkner seemed quite unperturbed. “He knows Joanna well. We’ve been there together often. I’d hardly be likely to tell him they belonged to another woman, would I? As I told you earlier, it was none of his business, anyway.”

“That seems reasonable enough surely,” Joanna said.

Miller looked at her gravely. “Does it?”

She seemed genuinely puzzled. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?”

Morgan had been listening to everything, a frown of concentration on his face and now he said quickly, “Just a minute. There’s something more here, isn’t there?”

“There could be.”

For the first time Faulkner seemed to have had enough. The urbane mask slipped heavily and he said sharply, “I’m beginning to get rather bored with all this. Is this or is it not another Rainlover murder?”

Miller didn’t even hesitate. “It certainly has all the hallmarks.”

“Then that settles it,” Morgan said. “You surely can’t be suggesting that Mr. Faulkner killed the other four as well?”

“I couldn’t have done the previous one for a start,” Faulkner said. “I just wasn’t available.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Easily. There were three statues up there two days ago. Now there are four. Believe me, I was occupied. When Jack called for me last night I hadn’t been out of the flat since Thursday.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, Sergeant,” Morgan said. “The gloves…you were getting at something else, weren’t you?”

“In killings of this kind there are always certain details not released to the Press,” Miller said. “Sometimes because they are too unpleasant, but more often because public knowledge of them might prejudice police enquiries.”

He was on a course now which might well lead to disaster, he knew that, and if anything went wrong there would be no one to help him, no one to back him up. Mallory would be the first to reach for the axe, but he had gone too far to draw back now.

“This type of compulsive killer is a prisoner of his own sickness. He not only has the compulsion to kill again. He can no more alter his method than stop breathing and that’s what always proves his undoing.”

“Fascinating,” Faulkner said. “Let’s see now, Jack the Ripper always chose a prostitute and performed a surgical operation. The Boston Strangler raped them first then choked them with a nylon stocking. What about the Rainlover?”

“No pattern where the women themselves are concerned. The eldest was fifty and Grace Packard was the youngest. No sexual assault, no perversions. Everything neat and tidy. Always the neck broken cleanly from the rear. A man who knows what he’s doing.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but you don’t need to be a karate expert to break a woman’s neck from the rear. One good rabbit punch is all it takes.”

“Possibly, but the Rainlover has one other trademark. He always takes something personal from his victims.”

“A kind of
memento mori
? Now that is interesting.”

“Anything special?” Morgan asked.

“In the first case it was a handbag, then a headscarf, a nylon stocking and a shoe.”

“And in Grace Packard’s case a pair of gloves?” Faulkner suggested. “Then tell me this, Miller? If I was content with one shoe and one stocking previously why should it suddenly be necessary for me to take two gloves? A break in the pattern, surely?”

“A good point,” Miller admitted.

“Here’s another,” Joanna said. “What about the ten-pound note? Doesn’t that make two items missing?”

“I’m afraid we only have Mr. Faulkner’s word that it existed at all.”

There was a heavy silence. For the first time Faulkner looked serious—really serious. Morgan couldn’t think of anything to say and Joanna Hartmann was just plain frightened.

Miller saw it as the psychological moment to withdraw for a little while and smiled pleasantly. “I’d better get in touch with Headquarters, just to see how things are getting on at that end.”

Faulkner tried to look nonchalant and waved towards the telephone. “Help yourself.”

“That’s all right. I can use the car radio. I’ll be back in five minutes. I’m sure you could all use the break.”

He went out quickly, closing the door softly behind him.

Faulkner was the first to break the silence with a short laugh that echoed back to him, hollow and strained. “Well, now, it doesn’t look too good, does it?”