Murders in the Blitz (18 page)
She parted company with the grumpy records clerk and sat on a leather-padded seat in the panelled foyer of the Town Hall, reviewing the notes in her bag. Yes, here he was, David Kydd, she had written, ‘wounded, seemed scared to be seen outside the house’. She had wondered at the time why he was so afraid. Now she would have to go and ask him.
Gathering up her possessions she strode out of the Town Hall and made her way to the row of terraced houses where she had seen the wounded boy. She hoped she would find him at home and that he could explain the anomaly.
As before, there was a considerable delay until the door to the house was opened. She could hear the sound of someone moving around inside and, eventually, the shuffling of reluctant feet approaching the front. She stayed firmly on the doorstep, waiting. At length the door opened a fraction and the uninjured cheek of David Kydd appeared in the crack.
‘I told you,’ his voice emerged in a hoarse whisper when he recognised Eve. ‘I wasn’t out on Monday morning. I didn’t see anything.’
‘It’s not that, Mr Kydd, I need to ask you about something else.’
The door opened a fraction wider and that same look of fear crossed the young man’s face.
‘I can’t think what that is. I’ve nothing to tell you.’
‘Actually,’ said Eve, ‘it’s quite simple. I’ve just been to the town hall and their records say that you are dead. Why do you think that is?’
The young man reeled back a few inches, almost as if he intended to slam the door and flee back into the house.
‘Well, as you can see, I’m clearly not dead. They must have made a mistake. They thought I might die, at one point in the field hospital, but I didn’t, as you can see.’
Eve noticed that Kydd’s hands shook and he had turned deathly pale, as if he was about to faint. She thought that he was not strong enough to take much more interrogation.
‘Yes, I can see that. Well, I’ll tell them at the Town Hall and they can get their records straight. Sorry to have bothered you again.’
As Eve turned away from the door she noticed that dusk had begun to fall. Hurrying back to her flat she remembered that she was supposed to be going out with Pete this evening. A visit to the cinema and then home for a meal and, if Pete was in the mood and when was he not, an early night and a bout of sex. All this, of course, only if the Germans kept away and the bombs dropped in the East End or on another city. Eve felt a frisson of guilt at this thought. How selfish to wish the onslaught on to other people, but it was difficult not to long for a rare night of calm.
They went to see Never Give a Sucker an Even Break with W.C.Fields, at the Rialto; it promised to be very funny. They settled into the plush seats, lit up a cigarette each and settled down to enjoy themselves. As usual there was a short film, about an hour long, to begin the programme and a cartoon. The news came from Pathé, with disturbing images of warfare in the North African desert accompanied by reassurances that things were going well for our brave chaps. The programme was not bad value for one and six, they thought. They were giggling through the cartoon when Pete reminded Eve of something.
‘Do you remember when we were kids and we went to Saturday morning pictures for a tanner?’
‘Yes, I used to go with Charlie. I loved the cartoons and the Buster Keaton shorts.’
‘My favourite were the cowboy films,’ said Pete, ‘Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kidd, Hopalong Cassidy. Here have a sweet.’
Pete passed Eve the paper bags of sweets he’d bought with their ration. Then he lit up another Craven A and settled back with his arm round Eve’s shoulder to enjoy the main film. There was something about this conversation that lit a faint memory in Eve’s brain. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something.
After the pictures they planned to meet friends in the pub, but the siren went just as they were leaving the cinema and they hurried to the shelter. Someone started a sing-song, which kept everyone’s spirits up as Pete and Eve cuddled up together in the damp, cold concrete bunker until the All Clear sounded with the dawn. Whenever she emerged from a shelter after a raid, Eve, after first scanning the immediate neighbourhood for signs of bomb damage, blessed her luck that she had managed to survive another night. Local damage was not too bad today. Grabbing Pete’s hand she dashed home, crossing the Green as fast as they could, under the shadow of the barrage balloon, through the rows of cabbages and leeks. When they reached her house, she pushed Pete inside, dragged him into her bedroom full of energy and gratitude for being alive.
Pete was not on duty on Sunday, but he was playing football for his team and Eve had decided not to cheer him on from the sidelines.
‘Not today, Pete. It’s only a Sunday friendly and I’ve got stuff to do. Good luck though.’
*
After flapping a duster round her two rooms, cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and eating some of the food left from last night, she took Jake for a walk. Poor Jake had been neglected recently with her rushing about for Inspector Reed. She would have to make it up to him when the case was over, take him out to the more countrified suburbs, like Ruislip or Edgware, and find a proper field for him to run in.
When she had finished her rudimentary housework, she thought that she would go to the hospital again and see if Amy had regained consciousness. It had only been one day, but you never knew. She was young, resilient and fit; she might have come round by now.
Eve took the bus to Fulham and walked to the hospital, picking up a little posy of flowers from a seller outside a church on the way. There had been some bomb damage overnight down here and crews were out clearing the debris. On the fringes of the crowds of helpers were the usual loiterers, waiting until the site was clear so that they could see what was left that was worth scavenging. A more criminal element went in search of sites where there was no activity yet and looted the unguarded premises of whatever they could find. This made the return of householders to their property from the shelters doubly traumatic as they lost their houses and anything of value that might have been salvaged as well. How cruel it was! Eve thought that all looters should be shot and was glad that they received heavy prison sentences, often with hard labour, when they were caught.
Sunday had brought a throng of visitors to the hospital to visit friends and relatives. Most of them would have been working in the week. Visiting time was strictly limited to between 10.30 and noon in the morning and 3.00 and 4.30 in the afternoon. Ward sisters would chase away any lingerers remaining outside these hours and matron dealt severely with anyone who complained. Eve had experienced this in the hospital in Wembley where old Pop, her grandfather, had spent his final days.
Now she knew where Amy was she swiftly arrived at the bedside. The girl had no other visitors this morning and, to Eve’s eyes, she seemed not to have moved a muscle. The drip stood exactly as it had, the blankets still cocooned her tightly and the bandages around her head looked exactly the same as yesterday. Eve sat in the chair beside the bed, wondering what to do next. The room was warm and, in spite of the visitors, who seemed mostly to be talking in whispers, remarkably quiet. It had been a disturbed night and Eve had not realised how weary she was. Tiredness overcame her and what started out as daydreaming in the chair turned into a doze.
She was jolted awake by a voice in her ear.
‘Hello,’ it said, ‘who are you?’
A plump girl in an ATS uniform stood beside the chair. Her arms were full of flowers and magazines. Eve, startled out of her sleep, sat up abruptly, jolted into wakefulness.
‘Oh, hallo,’ she spluttered, ‘I’m Eve Duncan. I work for the police. I came in to see if Amy had woken up yet and I must have dropped off.’
The girl laughed, ‘Hard night was it? I can never sleep in the shelter either.’ She put the flowers on the end of the bed with her other gifts. ‘It doesn’t look as if poor Amy’s going to be reading anything for a while. I do hope she’s going to be all right.’
‘Her parents said the doctors told them that she will almost certainly be absolutely fine, it wasn’t a very severe blow and she didn’t suffer any brain damage as far as they can tell. It’s a concussion and being unconscious is the best thing for her to rest and recover,’ Eve recalled from her visit yesterday.
‘I’m Patricia Kean,’ the girl said, shaking Eve’s hand.
‘Oh yes, I know you. You were at Ellereslie Road School with Amy.’
‘That’s right. How did you know?’
‘It’s part of my enquiry into Amy’s attack and some other things I’m working on. Her parents thought you were meeting Amy yesterday.’
‘No. I had to go and watch my little brother play football and take him home as my mother was working.’
‘Do you have any idea where Amy was going?’
‘No. I haven’t spoken to her since last weekend. I’m very busy,’ she pointed to the ATS uniform, ‘on a training course, learning to drive ambulances and trucks.’
Eve felt disappointed; she had really hoped that Patricia would be able to tell her where Amy was going on Saturday. Then she remembered something, Amy had spoken before she lost consciousness.
‘Amy said something when she was hurt, before she was put in the ambulance. I wonder if you can make any sense of it. She said something like “he wasn’t there”. No, it was, “it wasn’t him. Billy. It wasn’t him”. Do you understand that? Her parents said they thought she was going to visit a school friend. They understood it was you and Barbara, but obviously that was wrong.’
‘Yes, Barbara was at a funeral yesterday afternoon, one of her uncles was killed in the Blitz. I didn’t know Amy knew anyone called Billy,’ Patricia thought for a moment. ‘No, wait a minute, she must have meant Billy...’
Eve nodded expectantly, ‘Yes...?’ she said, baffled by this contradiction.
‘Dave Kidd, we always called him Billy. You know, because of Billy the Kid.’
‘Oh, my word,’ realisation washed over Eve. ‘Of course, it’s so obvious when you know. But what did she mean by “it wasn’t him”?’
‘Goodness, I don’t know. Come to think of it, I thought Dave Kydd was dead. Someone told me he’d died in Egypt.’
‘I’d heard that too,’ said Eve, ‘but I’ve met him; been round to his house and all. He’s wounded, not dead.’
‘Well,’ said Patricia, ‘it sounds as if there’s something wrong there.’
‘Yes,’ said Eve. ‘I’ll have to look into it. I’d better go, Thank you for talking to me, you’ve been very helpful. Goodbye Patricia.’
In a flurry of bag and gas mask Eve rushed from the ward, remembering at the last minute to leave the posy of flowers behind. She did not think it would be a good idea to confront David Kydd again alone, so she set out to find Charlie, as she felt she needed some sort of a bodyguard. It seemed ludicrous that such a scrawny, injured young man could be a dangerous murderer, but she shouldn’t take any chances. Inspector Reed would expect it, anyway.
She finally ran Charlie to earth in the most unlikely of places. He was helping out at the Blomfontein Road Swimming Baths, transferring bodies from an ambulance into the temporary morgue.
‘Good God, Charlie! What are you doing here?’
‘Just doing my bit, Evie. There was a fair few casualties last night. It’s getting a bit crowded in there and I’ve got to organise the relatives to identify them before we can release them for burial, poor buggers.’
‘Isn’t that up to the Coroner?’
‘Yeah. It would be normally, but there’s too many of them, he’s horribly overworked. I’m just lending a hand.’
‘Charlie, I need your help too.’
‘Righto, titch. I’ll tell them I’m leaving. I could do with a break. The smell in there gets to you after a bit. Wait here, I’ll see you in a mo.’
Eve loved the way Charlie always dropped whatever he was doing whenever she needed him. She couldn’t have a better friend.
When Charlie returned to her side she explained about her visit to the hospital and meeting Patricia, and what she had told her.
‘But I don’t get why they called him Billy,’ said Charlie.
‘Don’t you see? It’s a nickname. It’s because his surname’s Kydd. If it had been Cassidy they’d call him Hopalong. The kids were all mad about cowboys, same as we were.’
‘Oh, I get it. So this chap David Kydd is called Billy. So what? Why would he want to kill Malcolm Miller, Miss Broadbent and knock out this Amy girl?’
‘That, my friend, is what we are going to go and find out.’
Charlie wouldn’t let Eve visit David Kydd’s house until they had reported to the police station.
‘We can’t just walk into the house of what might be a very dangerous criminal without telling someone in authority where we are,’ he said.
Unfortunately Inspector Reed was not on duty and the Sunday skeleton staff seemed to have little knowledge or interest in the two murders that Eve was involved with.
‘All right,’ said the Duty Sergeant, sipping from his mug of hot tea and dunking a Garibaldi biscuit in it. ‘How old did you say this chap is? 21? And he’s wounded, you say. I should think you two would be able to handle him. If you get into any trouble just scarper and blow your whistle, Miss Duncan. We’ll come and sort it out.’ He smirked complacently and Eve tensed, ready to argue with him until Charlie nudged her leg with his boot. Eve glanced at him and he inclined his head towards the door.
‘Come on, Evie, let’s go. I don’t expect he’ll be any trouble.’
When they were outside on the pavement Eve protested, ‘He doesn’t seem to be taking this very seriously. We may have found the murderer of two people and he doesn’t care. It may be very dangerous.’
‘Well hanging around arguing with him isn’t going to make him change his mind. Come on Eve, let’s get on with it.’ Charlie took her arm and led her towards David Kidd’s house.
They had not advanced far up the road when Eve saw a thin, shambling figure in the distance. The boy wore a long khaki greatcoat and a balaclava covered his head, to mask his scar, Eve supposed. His limp was pronounced as he hurried along and the hem of the coat caught in his heels.
‘Look, Charlie, that’s him. He must have decided to go out for once. Let’s catch up with him.’
The pair gathered speed and followed the young man at a distance of about fifty yards. He never turned around to see if anyone was following and probably had no reason to think that they were. Soon he turned left into a quiet cul-de-sac dominated by the ruins of a bombed out church. The skeleton of the building was silhouetted against the bright blue morning sky and the lower parts of the demolished edifice were softened by a jungle of weeds that had sprung up in the months since the devastating explosion that had destroyed it. The vegetation had spread so that it was difficult to see where the ruined church ended and the overgrown graveyard behind it began.
Even though it was open to the elements the ruin had a claustrophobic atmosphere. All sounds of traffic from the main road were deadened and even the birds seemed to have abandoned this sad spot leaving it bereft of life. Eve, even as she crept forward with her new companion, fear, could not help thinking of the many weddings, christenings and funerals that would have been celebrated within these stricken walls. All those memories obliterated by a brutal wave of violence from the skies.
David Kydd stumbled and tottered amongst the debris, clutching at the top of a wall here, a thin sapling there. Eve and Charlie followed him, trying not to make any noise, but inevitably failing. It did not take long for Kydd to notice them. He swung round, an aggressive expression of terror and anger contorting his face, making the livid scar stand out more than ever.
‘Why are you following me? What do you want?’
‘I need to talk to you, Billy,’ said Eve, wondering why the boy had come to this hidden spot.
‘Who’s Billy? My name’s David. David Kydd. Haven’t you talked to me enough already?’
Eve suddenly realised what all this was about.
‘Your friends call you Billy. Didn’t you know that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re not David Kydd are you? You’re someone else. What is your name?’
‘Of course I am,’ the boy blustered. ‘David Kydd’s my name. I can show you my ID card if you like.’
‘I’m sure you’ve got an ID card. But I think you stole it from David.’
As she spoke Eve crept closer and closer to the young man and Charlie was slowly creeping round, over the rubble, trying to get behind him. The boy started to move backwards into what had once been a corner of the church, becoming more and more entrapped by the shattered masonry and the couple plaguing him.
Eve had crept to within reach of the imposter when he stretched out his arms and grabbed her to him. His surprisingly strong grip held Eve to his heaving chest with his left arm and, with the other, he pulled a long weapon out of the inside pocket of his overcoat and held it to Eve’s side in such a way that a slight thrust would have impaled her. Eve nearly collapsed with terror. Was she going to be another victim of this murderer? He had nothing to lose now.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ he yelled. Charlie froze. Eve trembled in the boy’s embrace, struck dumb, not able to take her eyes from the razor sharp edge of the bayonet pressing into her ribs.
Charlie raised his hands in the air. ‘All right, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming any closer, look, I’m moving away.’
Eve finally found her voice and she spoke clearly, without a quiver.
‘You’d better go away, Charlie. I’ll talk to David alone.’
‘He can’t go. He’ll bring someone back with him.’
‘You can’t stop him, David. You know this can only end one way.’ Eve spoke more confidently than she felt.
‘Yes, but you’ll be dead first.’
Charlie was scuttling through the rubble, well on his way back to the street.
‘Tell me what happened, David,’ said Eve, trying to keep her voice gentle and reassuring; not communicating her fear.
The boy’s grip on her relaxed imperceptibly, but he kept the bayonet aimed at her side, the point snagging on her shirt.
‘Why don’t we sit down?’ said Eve, slowly allowing her legs to fold under her until she was leaning against a low wall of bricks. The boy was forced to follow her if he was to keep the knife in place and soon they were seated on the ground.
An incongruous sound came from the boy’s throat, somewhere between a groan and a sob. Eve realised that he had started to cry.
‘I never wanted this to happen,’ he began to wail. ‘But I can’t go back. I’d rather die than go back.’
‘Go back where?’
‘Where do you think? To the Front, to Egypt, to the fighting. I couldn’t stand another minute of it, not another second.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Eve repeated.
‘Davy died, you see. Right in front of me. He stood on a mine. Horribly mangled, blood everywhere, most of it over me. Most of the platoon died that day, or was wounded. One of them must’ve told them that Davy was dead and it was put in the records. So the medics came and took Davy’s body back to the place – the field hospital, then they took me. I’d swapped our tags; taken his ID. Swapped with Davy, you see, and said I was him. I’d been wounded too, my head and my guts. I was very sick for a while and then they sent me home, here. They thought it was me that was dead, killed by the mine in the sand.’
The boy paused, shaking his head as if he didn’t understand how it could all have gone so wrong. So I came here, to Davy’s home. He’d told me all about it and it sounded grand. I had nowhere else to go. I don’t have no home, no parents or nothing.’
‘I see,’ said Eve. ‘And then what happened?’
‘Well, this bloody milkman, Malcolm wasn’t it? He come to the door because he’d heard his friend David was home. But when he saw it was me he created the hell of a fuss and threatened to get me arrested for impersonation and all sorts. He thought I’d done Davy in to get his house, but I never, I just needed somewhere to stay for a bit, till I was better. The milkman was in the house and he’d left his horse and cart outside. I knocked him on the head with this walking stick in the hall,’ the boy said. ‘I knew I had to get rid of him so I carried him out to the milk float and put him on it. It was really early so there was no-one about to see.’
‘And you finished the round,’ said Eve.
A cunning smile flitted across his face. ‘Yeah, I thought I’d better finish the round or everyone would know where he’d disappeared. So I did the streets and left milk on doorsteps.’
‘But you didn’t know exactly which steps to leave it on, did you?’
‘No, course not. Anyways, then I saw this bombsite and thought if I left him there no-one would know what had happened to him. Might think he’d been killed in a raid. But when we got there he’d begun to come round from the bang on the head, so I stabbed him with this,’ he brandished the bayonet, ‘they taught us to do that. There was a lot of blood.’
Eve shuddered. She imagined David struggling with Malcolm over the rubble on the bombsite and then driving the bayonet into his partially conscious body.
‘Well,’ said Eve. ‘They might have thought he was killed in a raid, but that building was bombed months ago. We soon knew it was a murder.’
‘Murder? Is it murder?’ the boy looked as if he was going to cry again. ‘I just can’t go back to the front. I can’t!’
How deluded the boy was, thought Eve. He didn’t seem to realise what he had done.
‘Well, you won’t have to now,’ Eve said. ‘Not after this. What about Miss Broadbent? That poor old dear wouldn’t have done you any harm.’
‘She came to the house too. She’d heard Davy was back and wanted to help him. When she saw me and realised I wasn’t him, she got really angry and told me off like a little kid. I tried to explain, but she wasn’t having any of it, said she would report me to the authorities as a deserter and stormed off.’
‘So she had to die too?’
The boy hung his head in a show of remorse. ‘I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t have her telling no-one. They shoot deserters. I followed her to the park and did it there.’
Eve nodded in understanding, still feeling the sharp bayonet against her side. ‘But what about David’s parents? Wouldn’t they have come to see him eventually?’
‘Oh, no. He’d told me, they’d been killed in an air raid early on, with his sister. They were out somewhere in London. He had no-one now. That’s why the house was his.’
Eve muscles were beginning to cramp and a sharp stone was sticking into her backside. She adjusted her weight and the bayonet was clasped tighter and skimmed her skin, tearing the fabric of her shirt.
‘Don’t try anything or I’ll do you too.’
‘It’s all right, I’m not going anywhere. What about Amy Grainger? Why did you attack her?’
‘She came to the house looking for someone she called Billy. I thought she was in the wrong place, but then she realised I wasn’t him and rushed away, yelling her head off. I ran after her and didn’t catch up with her till the Uxbridge Road because of the crowds. I can’t move fast. I didn’t mean to hurt her but she struggled and fell, hit her head on the kerb. I wouldn’t have hurt her, she was expecting a baby.’
‘Still is,’ said Eve. ‘You’ll be glad to hear that she’s going to be all right. Now, what are you and me going to do? The police will be here soon. You do know you’re going to have to give yourself up, don’t you?’
Already she could hear the bell on the police car in the distance. Good old Charlie, he’d known what to do.
Tears poured down the young man’s face and his grip on the bayonet relaxed. Eve took it gently from his limp hand and threw it into the undergrowth. The police would find it later. That was probably why he had come to the church, to get rid of the blade, evidence of his crime. She stood over the shaking boy, held out a hand and pulled him to his feet.
In reality, Eve knew, he could have avoided all of this. He was not really a deserter. He could have gone back of his own accord at any time as he was entitled to a period of injury leave. The fact that he had taken another man’s identity could have been explained away by his shock and his own injuries. His crimes had come later when his fear of discovery had overcome him.
‘I can’t go back,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t let them make me.’
Eve knew there was little chance of that now; he was destined for a different fate. Charlie and several policemen were now stumbling over the remnants of the church. She drew the weeping, shaking lad towards her and held him. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for this poor damaged boy; another casualty of war. And she still didn’t know his name.
