Dead of Winter Read online

  ‘One bright spot, if you can call it that.’ Sinclair glanced up. ‘The Stockwell police stopped a lorry they thought was suspicious in the early hours. It turned out to be filled with frozen carcasses of beef. Fresh from the Argentine, I’ve no doubt.’ The chief inspector lifted a grizzled eyebrow. ‘Two men were arrested. They’re still being questioned.’

  ‘It could be that hijacking gang we’ve been after.’ The assistant commissioner tried to sound optimistic. ‘Perhaps they’ll lead us to the rest.’

  ‘We can always hope,’ Sinclair agreed, though without much conviction. ‘So far all they’ve said is they were offered a tenner each by a man they’d never met before to drive the lorry to London. I doubt they’ll change their story.’

  He brooded on his words. Five years of war had brought a new dimension to lawbreaking, one which had stretched police resources to their limits. The thicket of regulations designed to control the distribution of food and other scarce resources issued by the government at the start of the conflict had opened fresh avenues for the criminal world, and it gave the chief inspector little satisfaction to know that several of the capital’s most dangerous gangs, formerly employed in the business of extortion and notorious before the war for their violent conduct at race meetings, had long since moved into new spheres of activity linked to the flourishing black market. Even worse, the virus had spread to the general population. Prompted by shortages and driven beyond endurance by the tendency of authority to poke its nose into every corner of life, ordinarily decent citizens now broke laws they no longer respected without compunction, taxing the police still further.

  The telephone on Bennett’s desk rang and the assistant commissioner picked it up. While he was speaking, Sinclair allowed his gaze to stray to the windows, where a sky the colour of dishwater could be glimpsed through panes crisscrossed with tape to minimize bomb blast. Try as he might, he could no longer bring the same passion to his work he had once felt. In truth, he found it only a burden now, a duty he accepted as necessary for the good of the force he had served for half a century, but one he could hardly wait to relinquish. The mortal struggle which his country had been engaged in these past five years had demanded sacrifices from all, and Sinclair’s own contribution had been to defer his plans for retirement, already in place when war had broken out, and answer the appeal which had come from Bennett’s own lips.

  ‘Angus, I need you. This war will be fought to the death, and it won’t be over by Christmas.’ This had been in late 1939, following the German invasion of Poland and before its assault on France, when peace had still seemed a possibility to some. ‘The Metropolitan Police will suffer along with everyone else. We’re already losing men to the forces and no fresh recruiting will be allowed until the fighting’s over. It won’t be long before we feel the pinch.’

  Unable to refuse the request, or deny the necessity behind it, Sinclair had agreed to stay on, but with a sinking heart. By refusing several offers of promotion and clinging to his rank as chief inspector he had managed to prolong his career as an investigator beyond its normal span. His name was associated with some of Scotland Yard’s most famous cases and his reputation, particularly among the younger detectives at the Yard, was close to legendary. But as he well knew, those days were over: he had turned seventy; it was time to retire gracefully and leave the world to others to bustle in.

  The post he held now as special assistant to Bennett gave him supervisory authority over all criminal investigations, but no active role in them. With it had come yet another offer of promotion, to the rank of superintendent. As the assistant commissioner himself had pointed out, it might seem anomalous for a mere chief inspector to give direction to officers senior to himself. But at that point Sinclair had dug in his heels. Before the Met’s plainclothes staff had been expanded in the years leading up to the war he had been one of only four chief inspectors on the Yard’s strength, men who had been seen as an elite group, specialists assigned to handle only the most difficult cases. He had been proud of the distinction he’d earned, and the fact that there were now a round dozen men holding the same rank was neither here nor there to Angus Sinclair.

  ‘I prefer to remain as I am, sir. And since I’ll be speaking in your name, I don’t imagine I’ll encounter any problems.’

  Left unsaid by him was the fact that many of those promoted above him had learned their trade at his hands and it had become commonplace at the Yard to refer to him simply as ‘the chief inspector’ without further identification.

  Beached at last, a slave to paperwork, to somehow making ends meet, Sinclair had quickly discovered the truth of the assistant commissioner’s prophetic words. If the Yard had felt the pinch of war at the outset, it was now close to being trapped in a straitjacket of diminished resources. The Met’s prewar strength of 19,500 had shrunk to a mere 12,000, and while the situation had been alleviated somewhat by the use of auxiliaries known as Specials, it had coincided with a sharp rise in crime. As though in response to some Malthusian principle, lawbreaking had increased in proportion to the number of laws added to the statute book. (Issued under the all-embracing Defence Regulations, there’d been no end of them.) Far too many policemen were engaged in pursuing petty offences, wasting both their own and the courts’ time, adding to the store of national irritation and impatience with authority. It had been the chief inspector’s aim throughout the war to counter this trend towards the trivial, to keep the plainclothes branch insulated from it as much as possible and engaged in the fight against genuine crime. But it was a battle he could never win entirely and the effort had exhausted him.

  Nor was he alone in his suffering, Sinclair reflected, as he watched Bennett, who was saying little but still had the receiver pressed to his ear, stifle a yawn. As assistant commissioner, crime, Sir Wilfred was responsible for all CID operations in the Metropolitan area, a position he had held for many years and one that now hung like an albatross around his neck. Indeed, if the chief inspector sometimes mourned his own decline into bureaucratic impotence, he was able to spare more than a thought for his superior, who had nursed the ambition, even the hope, that he might one day ascend to the commissionership. The summons had never come. Throughout Bennett’s career the government had continued its tradition of appointing a senior member of the armed forces to the post. (The present incumbent was an air vice-marshal.) And now that he, too, was preparing to retire – he’d already made it known that he was only waiting, like others, for the war to end before offering his resignation – he’d been forced to swallow a final irony. Word had come down from on high that the authorities had decided to make a break with the past: once hostilities were ended a new commissioner would be named, a civilian appointee.

  The call over at last, Bennett replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle. He removed his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. A slight, vital figure in his younger days, he had begun to put on weight lately and his dark hair, never abundant, was thinning to the point where what little of it remained barely covered his pale scalp.

  ‘Well, Angus? Is there anything else?’

  ‘Not for the moment, sir.’ With an effort Sinclair brought his mind back to the business in hand. ‘Apart from this murdered girl, of course.’

  ‘What do you plan to do?’ The assistant commissioner frowned. ‘Will you make it a Yard investigation?’ He was referring to a state of affairs relatively new in the capital, where in the past most serious crimes had been assigned as a matter of course to detectives stationed at the Yard, but where now, thanks to staff shortages, more cases were being farmed out to the various divisions.

  ‘No, I don’t think so, sir.’ The chief inspector began to gather his papers. ‘It sounds straightforward enough. Of course, it depends …’

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door, which opened. Bennett’s secretary put her head in. ‘Excuse me, sir. I’ve just had a call from registry. They’ve received some information from Bow Street which Mr Sinclair is waiti
ng for.’ She glanced at the chief inspector. ‘It’s a woman’s name and address.’

  ‘Come in, Miss Ellis.’ Bennett gestured her forward and took the sheet of paper she was carrying from her hand. Slipping a pair of spectacles on, he studied it for a few moments.

  ‘She’s a land girl, I see. A Polish refugee.’ He slid the piece of paper across the desk to Sinclair. ‘You can bring in my letters now, Miss Ellis. And a cup of tea, if you would …’ Bennett went on speaking to his secretary, but stopped when he saw the look of astonishment on the chief inspector’s face.

  ‘Angus … ?’

  Sinclair seemed not to have heard. He was staring at the piece of paper in his hand.

  ‘What is it, man?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ The chief inspector collected himself. ‘It’s this young woman who was murdered. I know her. Or of her, rather …’

  ‘Are you sure? A land girl?’ Bennett seemed unconvinced. ‘Couldn’t it be someone with the same name? What was it again? Rosa … Rosa something … ?’

  ‘Rosa Nowak. No there’s no mistake.’ The chief inspector glanced across at his superior. ‘You didn’t notice her address, sir? The farm where she was working? The name of her employer … ?’

  Wordlessly he passed the message back to Bennett, who peered at it through his spectacles for a moment, then shook his head in amazement.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said.

  3

  ‘JOHN MADDEN?’ Lofty Cook looked sceptical. ‘I saw the name, of course, but it didn’t ring a bell. Are you sure it’s the same bloke?’

  ‘It’s him all right.’

  ‘Your old guv’nor?’

  Billy Styles chuckled. He’d just had a flash of memory: himself as a callow young detective-constable, pink-cheeked, and with a waistline that was now only a memory. And of the man he’d been assigned to then. All of twenty years ago it was now.

  ‘I’d hardly call him that,’ he said. ‘We only worked together the one time and I was wet behind the ears.’

  ‘Still, he gave you your chance, didn’t he? Melling Lodge! What a case to kick off with. But then you always were a lucky devil.’ Cook glanced down at his colleague, grinning. Recently promoted to detective-inspector, he stood a couple of inches over six feet and was called Lofty by his pals, of whom Billy was one. They had joined the force at the same time, right after the last war, but though Billy had advanced more quickly – he’d been an inspector for half a dozen years now – it hadn’t affected their friendship, and Billy had been pleased to see his old chum’s familiar hatchet face split by a grin when he’d climbed out of the radio car that had brought him from the Embankment up to Bloomsbury.

  Although the gale had abated overnight, its icy claws could still be felt gusting down the narrow street and the pair of them had taken refuge in the doorway of a stationer’s shop. Across the road from where they were standing, two detectives from Bow Street were busy searching the spot where the young woman’s body had been found. The area, marked with tape, lay at the edge of a small unfenced yard that backed on to a bomb site, a building that had taken a direct hit at some time in the past and was now, like countless other tracts of ground all over London, a gutted ruin. An assortment of debris had been piled up in the cramped, cobbled space – bricks, mortar, sections of plastered wall – and the corpse had apparently been left on the fringe of this refuse, with the legs protruding on to the pavement.

  ‘What happened to Madden, then?’ Cook asked. He offered Billy a cigarette from his packet of Woodbines. ‘After Melling Lodge, I mean? After he quit the force?’

  ‘He got married to a lady he met while he was on the case. She was the village doctor.’

  ‘Must have been something special,’ Lofty observed. Cupping his hand, he struck a match and lit their cigarettes.

  ‘Special … ?’ Billy considered the remark, drawing on his fag. ‘Yes, I reckon you could say that.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Anyway, he bought a farm down there, Madden did. Same farm where this girl was working. Which explains why I’m here. The chief inspector wants the full story. He and Madden are old friends.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Cook pursed his lips, exhaling a plume of tobacco smoke into the frosty air. ‘But there’s not that much to tell. A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if you ask me.’

  It was an opinion Billy had already heard voiced, and by the chief inspector himself when he’d been summoned to his office not half an hour earlier.

  ‘Odds on it was a casual assault, a crime of chance.’Sinclair had shown him the initial Bow Street report. ‘I’ve just spoken to John. The girl had only been with them for two months. She’d been given the weekend off and come up to London to see her aunt. Find out what you can. But don’t spend too much time on it. Just determine the facts and report back.’

  The chief inspector had not thought it necessary to refer to the case Billy had been working on, a tortuous investigation into the sale by a black-market ring of petrol and heating fuels stolen from military depots, which had ended only the week before in a successful prosecution; nor the few days’ leave he’d been promised. With the shortage of staff that had prevailed for several years now, detectives were expected to put aside their personal lives as and when occasion demanded it.

  ‘And just so you’re clear in your mind, I’m not looking for an excuse to take this off Bow Street’s hands. We’ve enough on our plate as it is. Just see to it there are no loose ends.’

  These last words had been spoken with a scowl, as though his listener was known to be contemplating just such an outrage, from which Billy, armed with his sleuth’s intuition, had deduced that the old boy’s gout must be playing up. In spite of his awesome reputation, the chief inspector had his critics at the Yard and the suggestion had been made in more than one quarter that it was time he was put out to pasture. Billy, though, would have none of it. Having come under Sinclair’s eye early in his career, and in circumstances where his inexperience might have cost him dear, he had never forgotten how the chief inspector, for all the sharpness of his tongue, had forgiven him his mistakes. And allowed him to profit from them.

  He’d been more than content, too, with the orders he’d been given, particularly when he’d found out who was in charge at Little Russell Street. The Yard’s habit of interfering in other divisions’ business, of keeping plum cases for themselves, was often a sore point and he was glad he could tell Lofty that the investigation was still his to conduct. Given the rawness of the morning, neither of them had been disposed to dally and Cook had quickly shepherded him to the shelter of the stationer’s doorway, where Billy learned that the body of Rosa Nowak had been removed to the mortuary at Paddington overnight after the pathologist called to the scene had examined it by torchlight.

  ‘Who was the sawbones?’ he asked.

  ‘Ransom, from St Mary’s. He thought it most likely she was strangled but said he’d give us a definite opinion later today after he’s had her on the slab.’ Cook stamped his feet to keep warm. ‘It took us a while to discover who she was. We didn’t find her wallet until it was light.’ He nodded towards the two plainclothes men who were busy searching the rubble. ‘She must have been carrying it in that basket.’ He pointed to the object which was lying tipped over beside the white silhouette formed by the tape. Billy could see some apples lying loose there, mingled with the remains of broken eggshells. ‘The wallet ended up under a piece of corrugated iron. It had her identity card inside.’

  ‘What’s your opinion, Lofty? Do you think it was a sexual assault?’

  ‘Looks that way to me.’ The Bow Street inspector nodded. ‘She was lying on her back when we found her. Mind you, I don’t think he got very far. Her coat was still buttoned up when we found her. It occurred to me he might have killed her by mistake.’

  ‘Oh … ?’ Billy lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Squeezed too hard, maybe. Then run off when he realized he’d topped her.’ Cook shrugged. ‘But that’s only a guess.�
��

  ‘I read it was a WPC who got here first.’

  ‘That’s right. Name of Poole. Lily Poole.’ Cook grinned. ‘She’s stationed at Bow Street. Keen as mustard. She was walking back to the station after her shift when she heard the warden blowing his whistle and came over here to see what all the fuss was about. Didn’t waste any time, either. Went straight up to Great Russell Street – there’s a police call box there – and rang the station. By the time I got here she was already knocking on doors. But it didn’t do any good. This isn’t a residential street. Just shops and businesses. We spoke to one or two people who’d heard the warden’s whistle, but nobody who saw anything.’

  ‘Do we know when she was killed?’

  ‘Almost to the minute. It was a little after ten o’clock. That’s thanks to the warden. Name of Cotter. He’d bumped into her earlier. They had a chat. The last he saw of her she was walking down the street from that corner.’ Cook pointed to his right. ‘Twenty minutes later he came back – he was on his way home – and he tripped over the body.’

  Billy nodded, taking it all in. He waited while a group of women dressed in dun-coloured overalls under their coats, and with their hair tied up in scarves or handkerchiefs, went by. They were trailed by a pair of WAAFs, who craned their necks to look at the two detectives bent double in the yard and at the uniformed constable who was standing guard there.

  ‘Maybe all he meant to do was rob her?’ he suggested.

  ‘I thought of that. But it doesn’t seem likely.’ Cook blew on his fingers. ‘Her wallet may have disappeared when she dropped her basket. But he didn’t go through her things.’ He gestured at a suitcase bound with cord that was lying on the pavement beside the yard.